LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



POEMS. 



7 

ERNEST McGAFFEY. 




NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD 
AND COMPANY .... 1895. 



^,i 



K 



T6 2-^^ 



n\A- 



Copyris^ht. 1895, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 



John Wilson anu Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



TO MRS. G. H. NELSON, 

FROM HER AFFECTIONATE 
NEPHEW. 



CONTENTS. 

♦— 

Page 

And even I 1 1 

The Crow's Wing 13 

Brothers and Sisters 15 

FHght 16 

At the Wayside Inn 18 

Vae Victis 21 

A Dancer 23 

A Song of Death 25 

Tulips 27 

On Summer Nights 29 

Lilies 31 

The Cry of the Toilers 32 

Cow-Bells 35 

Jack-o'-Dreams 37 

The Locust 39 

Dreams 41 

Songs Unsung 43 

3 



©tttUoorgt 

Page 

My Mother Earth 47 

October 51 

On the Hills 53 

A Song of the Dust 54 

A California Idyl 56 

The Catbird's Whistle s^ 

En Silhouette 60 

A March Sunset 61 

Hickory Lilies 62 

The Amateur Photographer 63 

Violets 66 

An Indian Summer Day 67 

Isis 68 

The Meadow-Lark 71 

Song 73 

In the Heart of the Hickory Tree .... 74 

Defiance 76 

Poeta Nascitur, non Fit 78 

Threnody 80 

©itarp anU SMoof. 

The King's Love and Hate 83 

The Message of the Town 84 

"L' Allegro" 86 

4 



Page 

The Prompter d>7 

Apple-Blossoms 89 

The Wraith of Lochbury 90 

The Sphinx 91 

He Travels the Fastest who Travels Alone . 94 

An Old Daguerreotype 96 

A Prodigal 98 

Accursed 102 

Ishmael . 103 

Magdalen 105 

Re-incarnation 107 

The Lost Souls 108 

Sunset 109 

Lilith no 

Sonnet to Music . = in 

Midnight at Sea 112. 

The Spinning Dervish 113 

The Men of the Shovel and Pick . . , . 115 

Ecce Signum 118 

The Bar Sinister 119 

The Prodigals 124 

Dear Heart, Sweet Heart 126 

The Christian 128 

As for Me, I have a Friend 130 

In Passing 132 

5 



Page 

The Sea 137 

Derelict 138 

An Etching 142 

Drowned 144 

The Mermaid's Song 146 

False Chords 148 

The Seventh Daughter 150 

White Caps . 152 

The Flying Dutchman 154 

Colombo 158 

Polperro 163 

Haud a Wee my Willie 166 

Off Pelican Point 168 

Off Georges Banks 171 

Adrift 173 

The Northwest Passage 174 

A Bottle 175 

iHj> CJapter. 

The Burning of the Ships 179 

My Lady of Lilies 184 

Kismet 187 

De mi Amigo 189 

6 



Page 

By our ain Fireside 192 

In a Missouri Orchard 194 

A Sandal-Wood Fan 196 

I Fear no Power a Woman Wields .... 198 

In Absence 199 

Poppies 203 

I am thy Knight 205 

Retrospection 207 

At the Play 212 

If 214 

Her Room 216 

The Gray-Eyed Lady 221 

Tantalus 222 

One Woman 223 

It 's a Long Lane that has no Turning . . 225 

The Prairie 229 

An Indian Bow 232 

A Tarahumari Runner 233 

Little Big Horn 235 

Arizona 238 

The Sun-Dance of the Sioux 239 

A Prairie Minuet 243 

Overland 2/^4 

7 



Page 

Nez Percys . . . 245 

A Prairie Picture 250 

Red Cloud 252 

Geronimo 257 

Indian Burial 259 

A Mountain Trail by Moonlight . . . . 261 

The Navajo 263 

A Song of the Sunset Land 266 



SONGS AND LYRICS. 



SONGS AND LYRICS. 



AND EVEN I. 

The lark lies dead upon the plain, 
The wood-bird sits with folded wing, 

Leaps in my breast the old refrain, 
Still must I sing, still must I sing. 

Nay ! not because Parnassian height 
Seems nearer now or less sublime, — 

High, high indeed, his muse's flight 
That soars beyond the lapse of time, - 

But that my songs, when I have passed 
The shore-line of the Stygian Sea, 

May be in some man's heart at last 
What other songs have been to me. 
II 



No higher hope I hold than this, 
That one may say when I am dead, 

'' He reckons not of death's cold kiss ; 
His song shall answer in his stead/' 

And thus a changeless trust I keep 
My guiding star in stormy years, 

Or when I wake or when I sleep, 

That bids me through all doubts and fears 

To stake my soul upon the die^ 

And write some lines that will not rust, — 
A great heart-hunger not to lie 

Forgotten when my bones are dust. 



12 



THE CROW'S WING. 

Curving sweep of a burnished wing 
Black as the gloom of a winter night, 
Strong in a sense of hardy flight 
Over the woods and the mountain height, 
Winds and the white moon following. 



What though the lightning's fancies played 
Hide and seek in the darkling skies, 
Thou on the storm's broad breast didst rise. 
Sailing on as an arrow flies 
Loosed at a foeman's ambuscade. 



What though the hail made fierce attack 
Beating down on thine ebon wings. 
Rain that chills and the sleet that stings, — 
Naught to thee were these buffetings 
Borne along in the tempest-wrack. 

13 



Holding still to thine airy path 
Silent, stern as the seal of fate, 
Thou hast learned an to watch and wait, 
Morn break soon or the stars rise late, 
Come what may for the aftermath. 



Send my soul on a sable wing 

Death, when the darkness falls on me; 

Let me wander by land and sea 

Free as the crow's flight, yea, as free. 

Winds and the white moon following. 



14 



BROTHERS AND SISTERS. 

Brothers I have by the score, 

A million, yea, and more ; 

Men who are striving 'mid sun and rain 

Resolute comrades on hill and plain. 

Drawers of water and hewers of wood 

Bound in a common brotherhood, 

With the hearts and hands to dare and do 

Life's fiery furnace passing through. 

Oh I brothers, I pray for you. 

And sisters have I, yea, more 

Than sand-grains by the shore ; 

Women who work, and who know not peace 

Sighing in vain for the soul's release ; 

Sisters of trouble, in poverty's van 

Toil-worn faces I sadly scan, 

They come and go and are lost to view 

And death shall linger and fate pursue, 

Oh ! sisters, I weep for you. 



15 



FLIGHT. 

A HICKORY tree in the valley grew ; 

The snows and sun and the spring rains 
found it, 
And shrill-voiced winds from the northward 
blew, 
And the dews in the night-time fell around it. 



Deep into the earth its fibres crept 

And pierced the flint in the depths down 
under, 
Till the lightning out from the cloud-ways 
leapt 
And the hickory fell, and was split asunder. 



And there by its side the shadowy marsh 
A crane's nest held by the curving river. 

Where the tall grass mingled, coarse and harsh, 
With reed-beds broad and the sedge a-quiver. 
i6 



And the tree and the egg and the stone lay 
there 
But shreds and shards at the dim earth's 
portal, 
As common things that could never dare 
The higher realm of the far immortal. 



But an Indian wrenched from the tree a shaft 
And struck a Hint from the rock-ribbed 
ledges, 
And a crane's quill picked from a tangled raft 
Of reeds and weeds by the brown marsh- 
edges. 

And the arrow sped from his twanging bow 
Till the lone blue vault of the sky was riven. 

And that which was humblest here below, 
Now at the last was the nearest heaven. 



17 



AT THE WAYSIDE INN. 

Mine host of the wayside inn, 

We seldom see him there ; 
But the waiter, tall and thin, 

With his puritanic air, 
He comes, and brings us wine, 

Then leaves us there alone, — 
She with the vintage brought from Rhine, 

I with the iuice of Rhone. 



Oh, girl with the golden hair 

And eyes of iris blue. 
Has Troy's own Helen fair 

Changed places, then, with you ? 
No face of woman yet 

To me so much hath been. 
And I with you all else forget 

Here at the wayside inn. 
i8 



And the cuckoo clock on high 

Keeps up its race with time, 
And still, as the moments fly 

Drones out with mellow chime. 
*' Cuckoo," as the quarter falls 

It sounds in plaintive tone ; 
'' Cuckoo," at the half it loudly calls 

Then leaves us there alone. 



Oh, girl with the golden hair 

And the red rose at your breast, 
You are fair, mayhap too fair, 

But, bah ! you are like the rest, 
And why should I to-night 

These vain romances spin, 
That still with the curling smoke take flight 

Up from the wayside inn ? 



And the wine in the glasses glows 

As slow and slow we sip, 
While rhe heart of the red, red rose 

Has kissed at last her lip, 
And the flame on the hearth-stone sinks 

As the embers turn to gray. 
And the bead on the bubbling grape-juice blinks 

Just once and melts away. 
19 



Oh, girl with the golden hair, 

Know this before we part : 
I share and do not share 

I give, yet keep my heart ; 
For pride will stand all test. 

And you no word shall win 
From the careless wight who loved you best 

There at the wayside inn. 



20 



\M VICTIS. 

I SING the woe of the conquered, a winding- 
sheet for the slain, 

Oblivion's gulf for those who fell, who strug- 
gled and strove in vain. 

As of old, mid the plaudits of thousands, may 

the victor in triumph stand, 
While the blood of the vanquished trickles 

down and reddens the yielding sand. 

For the living the martial music, and the clus- 
tering laurel wreath ; 

Let the dead rust on forgotten, as a sword in 
a rusty sheath. 

On the face of youth and health and strength 
should the blessing of sunshine fall ; 

A single shadow may well suffice the face that 
turns to the wall. 

21 



And he who has taken a mortal hurt in the 

strenuous battle of life, 
Let him creep away from the dust and din, 

from the arduous toil and strife, 

Let him go as a wounded animal goes, alone, 

and with glazing eye. 
To the depths of the silent fastnesses, in silence 

there to die. 



For the prow of the ship rides high and free 

that baffles the savage gales, 
And the wind and rain is a requiem for the 

wreck of the ship that fails. 



22 



A DANCER. 

In the lamplight's glare she stood, — 
The dancer, the octoroon, — 
On a space of polished wood 
With glittering sand-grains strewn ; 
And a rapid, rhythmic tune 
From the strings of a mandolin 
Leaped up through the air in viewless flight 
and passed in a strident din. 



Her eyes like a fawn's were dark, 
But her hair was black as night, 
And a diamond's bluish spark 
From its masses darted bright, 
While around her figure slight 
Clung a web of lace she wore, 
In curving lines of unhidden grace as she 
paused on the sanded floor. 
23 



Then the clashing music sprang 
From the frets of the mandolin, 
While the shadowy arches rang 
With insistent echoes thin, 
And there, as the spiders spin 
Dim threads in a ring complete, 
A labyrinthine wheel she wove with the touch 
of her flying feet. 



To the right she swayed, — to the left. 
Then swung in a circle round, 
Fast weaving a changing weft 
To the changing music's sound, 
As light as a leaf unbound 
From the grasp of its parent tree. 
That falls and dips with the thistledown afloat 
on a windy sea. 



And wilder the music spell 
Swept on in jarring sound, — 
Advanced and rose and fell, 
By gathering echoes crowned ; 
And the lights whirled round and round 
O'er the woman dancing there, 
With her Circe grace and passionate face and 
a diamond in her hair. 
24 



A SONG OF DEATH. 

As a bird to its nest, a man to his home, a 
child to its mother, 
I, who have tossed on the sea of life as a 
leaf on a wind-swept heath, 
Turn from the hearts of those I love, — from 
sister, father, and brother, — 
Turn with a smile on my lips and come, to 
meet and greet thee, Death. 



Thou art the key to the vast unknown ; with 
thee are the dark abysses 
That stretch between grasses and stars^ and 
divide us from those we love. 
Welcome art thou to the broken-hearted, — 
thine icy kisses 
Are a message of hope, as in olden days was 
the olive branch borne by the dove. 
25 



As the germ to the sprout, to the tree and the 
leaf, so change is common 
And the dead leaf lives in the spring-time 
grass, and nothing really dies. 
Shall blades of grass be immortal, and never a 
man or woman ? 
We are all a part of nature still, and nature 
never lies. 

Hail, silence, and open the prison doors that 
herald the soul's release 1 
Farewell ? 'T is a beautiful word, to be 
uttered with even breath. 
Wrap me and fold me in dreams when my spirit 
shall know surcease. 
I live and am happy, and as I live I fear not 
thee, O Death. 



26 



TULIPS. 

Filmy as foam and as frail as a blade 
Of Autumn-tinged grass, so they came to her 
sight, 
Red, red and yellow, with varying shade 

Yellow and red, with a blending of white, — 
Tulips, whose petal-tips twisted and turned, 
Tulips, that reddened and smouldered and 

burned, 
Flowers whose cups held the sunlight inurned. 

Never a blossom as piquant as she, 
Search where you will and as long as you 
may. 
Why does she come at this late day to me 

To mould me as mouldeth a potter his clay ? 
I, who have recked not of clouds overcast 
I, who have baffled and banished the past, 
To be conquered and tamed by a woman at 
last! 

27 



How do they seem in their beauty to her? 

As tulips — or germs of the Infinite plan > 
Shall a flowers dumb petal in wakening stir, 

And never the heart of a woman or man? 
Tulips, all dashed with the dew and the rain. 
Tulips, that glow with their passionate stain. 
As heart of my heart and with pain as my pain. 



28 



ON SUMMER NIGHTSo 

On summer nights the yellow stars 

Shine through the watches held on high, 

Suspended from the countless spars 
Of cloud-fleets anchored in the sky ; 

And wafted past upon the breeze 

Slow winding down from distant heights 

There comes the roll of far-off seas 
On summer nights. 

On summer nights the signal stars 

Flash o'er a wide, wild waste of seas, 
The signal lights of ruddy Mars, 

Orion, and the Pleiades ; 
And down the winds a murmur sweeps 
Like whir of wings in circling flights, 
The ebb and flow of mystic deeps 
On summer nights. 
29 



On summer nights the steadfast stars 
Swing from the masts of shadow ships 

That lie within the harbor bars 

Where the long sea-roll curls and dips ; 

And still there comes in divers keys 

Down drifting from those beacon lights 

The spectral wash of far-off seas 
On summer nights. 



30 



LILIES. 

Teach me but half thy purity 

And I will rest content, 
Just half the spell of white-winged peace 

Which, to thy petals lent, 
Makes all that 's pure and passionless 

In one deep stillness blent. 

From liquid depths that give me back 

The shadows from below, 
I see thy forms, all statuesque, 

Wreathed in the river's flow 
That sends their still reflection up 

As white as driven snow. 

Ah I what am I to such as these, — 

Sad lilies, tall and fair ; 
That stand as pale and motionless 

Amid the summer air. 
As though a sculptor's marble flowers 

Were but unfolded there? 
31 



THE CRY OF THE TOILERS. 

Far to the clouds ascending, 
Over tlie darkness trending, 
Wailing and never ending 

Floats up a fated cry : 
" Fixed in poverty's niches, 
In hovels, dens, and ditches, 
Starved in the midst of riches 

We die, we die, we die." 



Those who have mirth and madness 
Mock at the wraith of sadness, 
Joy shall be theirs, and gladness 

Skies that are blue and fair ; 
These shall with thirst be burning 
Prone on the world's wheel turning 
By the steep hillsides learning 

The lesson oi' despair. 
32 



Little their time for sleeping, 
Sowing but never reaping, 
Ever the vigil keeping 

Watchfully, night and day ; 
Strong in their dull persistence. 
Breasting the wave's resistance 
Just for a bare existence, — 

So runs their world away. 



Still do their hearts aspire 
Yearning for something higher, 
As from their souls the fire 

Of hapless craving springs ; 
Scourged by the thongs and lashes 
Bleeding from cruel gashes, 
Crucified — upward flashes 

This cry of theirs that rings. 



High in the heavens o'er us, 
Resonant and sonorous. 
Blending its mighty chorus 

With drifting wind and rain ; 
Like to a vague outreaching 
Despairing, yet beseeching. 
The cry of a full heart teaching 

Its longing and its pain. 
3 33 



Sorrow their lips unsealing 
Famine and woe revealing, 
Into the midnight pealing 

Echoes the shuddering cry : 
" We whom a stern fate tosses 
Lone, on a sea of losses, 
Christ of the thorns and crosses 

We die, we die, we die." 



34 



COW-BELLS. 

I MIND me well, as a barefoot lad 

When the toil of the day was over, 
How I dropped the bars by the barnyard path 

And walked to the dewy clover, 
While far away rose the sound of bells 
Faint as the murmur of sea-worn shells, 

*' Tin, tin, tin," came the echoes thin, 
And then as they drifted nearer, 

'*Ting, along, ling," would the chorus ring 
Through the distance clear and clearer. 

And by the ford where the gray mill loomed 

I drove them down to the edges, 
And the great round moon peeped over a cloud 

As they stood knee-deep in sedges ; 
And the bells kept time in a rude refrain 
Like rain-drops dashed on a window-pane, 

" Clink, clank, clink," as they bent to drink 
Where the spray from the dam came foam- 
ing. 

And " Clink, clink, clank," as they climbed 

the bank 
In the starlit, shadowy gloaming. 
35 



And on through the pastures back we came 

Where the cricket's rasping shrillness 
Sprang up from the roots of the ribbon grass 

And dinned in the twilight stillness ; 
But the jangling cow-bells drowned his cry 
With discords harsh as they hurried by, 

" Cling, clang, clong,''as they swayed along 
With the bats and the night-hawks o'er 
them. 
And "Cling, clang, clang," how the music 
rang 
As they surged by the bars before them. 

And there as I raised the rough-hewn poles 

And pushed them into their sockets, 
And lazily sat on the old rail fence 

With hands thrust deep in my pockets, 
I listened still for a straying note. 
And whiles from the dusk would softly float, 

" Co-link," and then through the maze again 
In the hush of the summer weather, 

" Co-lank " — 't was all, and in God's far hall 
The star-choirs sang together. 



36 



JACK-O'-DREAMS, 



You see me on the crowded street 

In some fair woman's face 
One moment, then I vanish fleet 

And leave behind no trace ; 
You find me in the flush of youth, 

I fill the niche of age, 
And all well-known am I forsooth 

To sinner, saint, and sage. 



I haunt the stars in blackest night, 

I come in noontide's gaze. 
And scourge along in endless flight 

The caravan of days. 
Nor cowl nor cloister shuts me out 

In beauty's arms am I, 
And I am with your hope and doubt 

Your laughter and your sigh. 

37 



The wind's wild wings shall waft me down 

As long as winds do blow ; 
Spring's green is mine, and Autumn's brown 

And Summer's orchard snow. 
And wraith-like in its robes of mist 

My flitting form will be, 
Where cold foam-serpents writhe and twist 

In Winter, by the sea. 

Nay : I will pierce where spirits stand 

Beyond the soul's eclipse. 
As swift as when from loosened hand 

The carrier pigeon slips ; 
My shadow stays, though evermore 

Mine other self it seems ; 
You follow, but I go before 

For I am Jack-o'-Dreams. 



38 



THE LOCUST. 

A SOMBRE-HUED locust was sioging to me — 
Seventeen years, seventeen years, 

Up on a branch of the mulberry tree 
(Seventeen years and years). 

The Summer was steeped in the languor of 
June 

And sun-dial shadows were creeping to noon 

As the locust spun out his monotonous tune — 
Of seventeen, seventeen years. 

And how long ago did I hear it before ? 

Seventeen years, seventeen years. 
Just the same echo its resonance bore 

(Seventeen years and years). 
Dead ashes of days, how they taste on the lips, 
How air-castles topple and how the time slips! 
Say, friend, did you hail them, my long-van- 
ished ships. 

Those seventeen, seventeen years ? 
39 



Sing on through the summer, O locust, with 
glee, — 

Seventeen years, seventeen years. 
The leaf is yet green on the mulberry tree 

•(Seventeen years and years). 
Since last you were here, I am cynical grown, 
I 've seen the June leaves by December wind 

strown, 
The world is Medusa, and turns men to stone 

In seventeen, seventeen years. 



40 



DREAMS. 

Over the long, rich, billowy grass, up and down 
are the footsteps flying 
Of viewless winds that pass and leave no 
token of their flight ; 
With never a tree to mar the stretch of the 
prairie around me lying, 
A dark green sea, whose rolling waves the 
sun has tipped with light. 

The iron-weed sways on the wind-swept ridge, 
the wild rose blooms in the hollow, 
A hawk wheels round in circling sweep 
through trackless paths on high. 
And over the grass the breezes go, and the 
tremulous echoes follow 
Filling the crannies of eddying winds from 
earth to sky. 

41 



Horizon-ward and far to the west, like the 
smoke of a distant steamer, 
Mounting slowly up the skies, on the steps 
of a hidden stair, 
Vague, so vague, as vague and dim as the 
dream of an idle dreamer 
A curling cloud-wraith, spiral formed, is 
rising through the air. 

Sun and wind, and the far-off sky ; the sun 
that shines and the wind that passes ; 
The life that is, and beyond the clouds the 
life that is to be — 
Dreams, all dreams, that come and go, as the 
wind's light footprints over the grasses 
What is my life but a drop of rain that falls 
in a shoreless sea > 



42 



SONGS UNSUNG. 

Sweet the song of the thrush at dawning, 

When the grass lies wet with spangled dew ; 
Sweet the sound of the brook's low whisper 

Mid reeds and rushes wandering through ; 
Clear and pure is the west wind's murmur 

That croons in the branches all day long ; 
But the songs unsung are the sweetest music 

And the dreams that die are the soul of song. 

The fairest hope is the one which faded, 

The brightest leaf is the leaf that fell ; 
The song that leaped from the lips of sirens 

Dies away in an old sea-shell. 
Far to the heights of viewless fancy 

The soul's swift flight like a swallow goes, 
For the note unheard is the bird's best carol 

And the bud unblown is the reddest rose. 
43 



Deepest thoughts are the ones unspoken, 

That only the heart sense, listening, hears ; 
Most great joys bring a touch of silence 

Greatest grief is in unshed tears. 
What we hear is the fleeting echo. 

A song dies out, but a dream lives on ; 
The rose-red tints of the rarest morning 

Are lingering yet in a distant dawn. 

Somewhere, dim in the days to follow 

And far away in the life to be. 
Passing sweet, is a song of gladness, — 

The spirit-chant of the soul set free. 
Chords untouched are the ones we wait for — 

That never rise from the harp unstrung : 
We turn our steps to the years beyond us. 

And listen still for the songs unsung. 



44 



OUTDOORS. 



MY MOTHER EARTH. 

I. 

Into the silence of thy temples green 
To thy dear arms, O mother earth I come 
When sore distressed from life's perplexing ills, 
And steep my soul in thy all-healing strength. 
As wounded denizens of wood and field 
Seek thy most quiet and secluded depths, 
So I, when racked by lingering heart-aches go 
Into those wide and leafy halls of thine 
And give myself to solitude and thee. 

I am a worshipper at thy fair shrines 

mother mine ; in Nature's ritual 
Thy forms are to me as an open book. 

1 read thy future, present, and thy past 
By many a curious and half-hidden sign 

And trace thy wanderings throughout the years 
With knowledge quaffed at thy perennial founts. 
And most I love the dim autumnal woods ; 
Dear friends, tho' silent, the companion trees, 
That whisper as I pass, and scatter down 
Leaf benedictions on my leaf-strewn path, — 
Old oaks, colossal, that like sowers stand 
47 



Amid the acorns scattered on the ground ; 
Maples, whose garments of sun-tinted flame 
Seem gorgeous banners in October's van ; 
And pines, like fingers that point up to 

heaven, 
That distant land beyond the purple clouds. 

I know the windings of down-flowing streams 
The mossy logs that stretch from bank to bank 
And shallows carpeted with pebbles bright, 
Where bubbles in the sunlight flash and gleam ; 
I know the texture of the gray squirrel's nest 
The drumming of the partridge, and the cry 
That comes when darting o'er the ripples past 
The lone kingfisher speeds his sudden flight. 

Trust me to know the secrets of thy house. 
Dear mother earth I in thy deep niches placed 
The primrose waves, and slender violets 
Smile dewily to greet the south wind's kiss. 
Am I not known to all thy family ? 
And may I not in thy most inner dells 
Find the quick welcome of thy sympathy ? 
My mother earth, mine ancient mother earth, 
Dear is to me thy wintry garb of gray 
Dear the green splendor of thy April crown. 
Sweet the soft whispers of thy summer breeze 
And doubly dear thy rich October dreams. 
48 



IT. 

The sunshine on the tree-trunks comes to 

weave 
Strange draperies of rare and antique lace 
In web-like lines slow filtered through the 

leaves ; 
Cloud-land peeps down from blue, serenest 

skies, 
The earth's heart beats from slow pulsating 

breast, 
And freshest greenwood odors fill the air 
With incense from a hidden censer swung. 

There 's not a vein upon the tiniest leaf 
Nor cobweb silvered by the glistening dews 
Nor bird-wing brushing through the forest 

aisles. 
But what I see and feel its influence. 
Why, all the paintings that were ever praised 
And all the music struck from vibrant strings 
Are but a faint reflection of the woods, 
The mimicry of art at Nature's feet. 

In the deep silence of autumnal shades 
Old sorrows die, new memories spring up, 
Hope, like a torch, illuminates the road. 
And all our former burdens fall away. 
4 49 



Vistas and valleys of rich-colored woods 
Wave high above the sylvan thickets dense ; 
And there, when straying footsteps lightly fall 
Shy wood-birds flit, across the space between, 
And timid rabbits lift expectant ears. 



O mother earth, my constant love for thee, 
Born of the very earliest of my thoughts, 
Holds in its scope no taint of worldly things. 
Thy changing moods are but the diiferent 

lights 
Of constancy that lives forevermore ; 
For all things else are frail as ropes of sand 
Beside the truth and beauty of thy face. 



mother earth, thy leaves and trees and 

streams 
The large content that fills thy sleeping woods 
Thy calm repose, and heart-consoling balm 
Are more than all religions are to me ; 
And almost half a Druid now am I 
As in thy arms, on mossy couch outstretched. 
Forsaking trouble to the wayward winds, 

1 give my soul to spirit hands unseen 

And drift away to dreamland through thy 
gates. 

5° 



OCTOBER. 

A MAZE of leaves in a rich mosaic, 

Brown and yellow and flaming red, 
Where the winds go by in the depths archaic 

And bright through the branches overhead 
Like a fair white hand at a window shutter 

The sunlight under the leaf-shades peeps, 
Now here, now there, with its changing flutter, 

While below the old earth sleeps and sleeps. 



A fringe of gray and a sweep of yellow 

Crimson streaks and a belt of brown, 
Mingled in with the sunshine mellow 

And sun-tinged leaves soft floating down : 
White the gleam of the shining pebbles 

And green the moss on the banks beside, 
As down the shallows the buoyant bubbles 

Into the cool wood shadows glide. 
51 



Deep in the heart of the woods lies glowing 

The gathered life of a thousand noons, 
And echoes faint through the trees are blowing 

As mystic iEolus plays his tunes, 
And the passing step of the wind god rouses 

The dreaming leaves as he hurries by, 
While the sunshine droops and the still air 
drowses 

Under the purpling autumn sky. 

• 

Fleecy clouds by the wind swept over, 

And a vague, faint scent all sharp and sweet, 
Like the mingled smell of thyme and clover 

Bruised by the summer's flying feet ; 
Ashes, fires, and dying embers, 

A waste of gold and a vault of flame, 
And the frail gray ghosts of the lost Septembers 

Vanishing, fading, past reclaim. 



52 



ON THE HILLS 

The tangled grass is at her feet 

The blue sky distant stands, 
And shadows on its marge repeat 

The spell of weaving hands. 

Wide vaults of freest space beyond 

To her clear eyes are shown, 
And where the breeze has waved its wand 

Light thistle-downs up-blown. 

A hawk in widening circle sails 

Above the far-off trees. 
And motionless amid the swales 

The cattle stand at ease. 

She marks the yellow stubbles shorn 

As on her way she takes ; 
And shore-lines of September corn 

On which the sunlight breaks. 

The day her forehead kisses fair 
The wind her long locks thrills ; 

Diana of the ruddy hair 
Tall-striding o'er the hills. 
53 



A SONG OF THE DUST. 

A SONG of the good gray dust 

That lay in the winding road, 
Till caught by a sudden gust 

It sprang from its dry abode, 
And over the hills was sowed 

On the leaves and ribbon-grass, 
On the gilded wheat, and the shady sheet 

Of the swamp-pool, smooth as glass. 



A song of the good gray dust 

That falls on flower and thorn, 
That powders the sumach's rust 

And whitens the bladed corn ; 
That drops in the ways forlorn 

Or rests on the blossoms white. 
As a wayward touch that has taught thus much 

Of the wind's seolian flight. 
54 



A song of the good gray dust 

That tinges the wayside leaf, 
That hangs in a tawny crust 

On the farmer's home-bound sheaf, 
That swings for a moment brief 

On the barley's bearded sheen. 
Till the creaking peals of the wagon-wheels 

Shall scatter it down between. 

A song of the good gray dust 

Ground out from the trampled clod, 
And into the highway thrust 

Where the lone wayfarers plod ; 
Yet still, by the grace of God, 

Shall it feel the cooling rain 
And shall know the bliss of the wind's light 
kiss 

That stoops to the country lane. 



55 



A CALIFORNIA IDYL. 

A ROAD-RUNNER dodgcd in the chaparral 
As a coin will slip from the hand of a wizard 

A black wasp droned by his sun-baked cell, 
While flat on a stone lay a Nile-green lizard, 

And a wolf in the rift of a sycamore 

Sat gray as a monk at the mission door. 

A sage-hen scratched 'mong the cactus spike 
And high in the sky was the noon sun's 
glamour, 

While steady as ever rose anvil-strike 
Came the rat-tat-tat of a yellow-hammer, 

And a shy quail lowered his crested head 

To the dust-lined sweep of a dry creek's bed. 

And out of the earth a tarantula crept 

On his hairy legs to the road's white level, 

With eyes where a demon's malice slept 
And the general air of an unchained devil, 

While a rattlesnake by the dusty trail 

Lay coiled in a mat of mottled scale. 

56 



Then the gray wolf sprang on the sage-hen 
there, 
And the lizard snapped at the wasp and 
caught him, 
While the spider fled to his sheltering lair 

As though a shadowy foeman sought him, 
And the road-runner slipped from the wayside 

brake 
And struck his beak through the rattlesnake. 



57 



THE CATBIRDS WHISTLE. 

An old bridge stood with dust thick strewn, 
Where through a crooked country lane 
A brook flowed down, and out again 
Slow gurgling past with quiet croon ; 
While sunshine kissed the cool gray stones 
And chequered every leaf and spray, 
And shallows sang, in treble tones, 
Where pebbles in mosaic lay. 

And softly, from the deepest shade, 
A catbird's whistle low and clear 
Crept out as though the sound was made 
For only Nature's listening ear ; 
Like dripping water falling slow 
Round mossy rocks in music rare, 
So, mellowed by the summer glow 
The catbird's whistle echoed there. 

58 



Far up along the short green sward 
The white sheep nibbled at the grass, 
And lightly, as the winds did pass 
Would come the catbird's minor chord, 
A call that made all others mute, 
Soft thrilling thro' the drowsy air ; 
As some lost note from Orpheus' lute 
So came the catbird's whistle there. 



59 



EN SILHOUETTE. 

The blot on the spider's murky web, 
The sombre shade where the ripples ebb, 

And the darkness through the trees, 
But never a shadow that falls so far 
As when o'er the ruddy western bar 
The sunset sails by the first gray star 
Into the twilight seas. 

The tawny leaves that are floating down 
The trailing vines that are crisp and brown 

As grass on the darkling leas ; 
A lone harp strung in the swarthy reeds 
That sounds its chords as the north wind leads 
Where the dusky water slow recedes 
Into the twilight seas. 

The hills in the distance, black as jet, 
A burned-out sun that is sinking yet, 

The sigh of a restless breeze — 
And who shall mourn for the days now sped. 
The after-glow of a summer dead. 
Long since with the far-down shadows fled, 
Into the twilight seas ? 
60 



A MARCH SUNSET. 

Faint clouds that form a snowy ledge, 
And through the space that twilight fills 

The gray half-moon with battered edge 
Sailing athwart the sunken hills. 

And in the west a ragged glint 
Of sunset splendor sends its flash 

Where night and day, like steel to flint, 
All suddenly together clash. 

And down the chill wind's rustling flight 
From out a waste of desert sky 

Sinks, bubbling into vasty night, 
A wandering curlew's cry. 



6i 



HICKORY LILIES. 

Lo I where the gray of early March 
Lies frost-like on the grasses green, 

And by the roadway many an arch 
Of tangled branch and vine is seen, 

Weird flowers upon old Winter's tomb 

The waxen hickory lilies bloom. 

Soft, sensuous petals pale as death 
With drooping edges half uncurled 

Unwavering in the wind's cool breath 
That drifts across the upper world ; 

Strange forest-buds that gleam overhead 

Their creamy pallor splotched with red. 

The mist from out the marsh below 
Spreads filmy wings and glides away ; 

Burns in the east a ruddier glow, 
While high above the hillside clay 

All wet with dew, the dawn's perfume 

The waxen hickory lilies bloom. 
62 



THE AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER. 

There was a wandering scientist went by, 
And gleaned odd bits of Nature with his 
lens, — 
Far woods dark outlined on an April sky 
And stately cat-tails by the reedy fens ; 
And streams that trickled through the nar- 
row glens 
That in the northern wildernesses lie. 

Here lay a stretch of sleeping water, there 

The sunset's rose, its petals curling down ; 
And sometimes rock-ribbed cliffs rose gaunt 
and bare. 
With massive broken pillars rough and 

brown 
Where the dim twilight in her nun-like gown 
Came stealing in upon the drowsy air. 

And these were all dream-glances, till the sun 

Flashed in upon his camera, and set 
A vision of a vision, from a net 

63 



Of sunlit strands all in an instant spun, 
And thus at length the subtle toil was done : 
Frail frost-work, mocking Nature, black as jet. 

But oh 1 when through their transformation 

came 

These sombre plates, how wonderful were 

wrought 

Deep pools that darkened in a woodland frame. 

And rippling currents that the light had 

caught. 
With leaf flotillas on their windings brought 
Crisp-curled mementos of the sunlight's flame. 

And glimpses of the stars and gnarly trees ; 
The moon's slow splendor and the hopeful 
grass ; 

And winy tints of August where the lees 
Of summer sank, like bubbles in a glass, 
And clouds high castled in a snowy mass 

Over a voiceless waste of azure seas. 

The color was not there, for those who sought 
The color of the senses ; but the wise, 

By keen imagination erstwhile taught 
Saw all the wealth of Nature's myriad dyes, 

64 



And gazing still, with introspective eyes, 
Found tints that those not dreamers held for 
naught. 



o 



The music was not there, — the first faint notes 
That morning brings when dawn-announcing 
birds 

Pipe warily from half-unwilling throats ; 

Nor yet was there the lowing of the herds ; 
Nor came across the water spoken words 

From the still figures in the dusky boats. 

And yet 'twas all so vivid, fresh, and strong, 
The feeling of the music, that it seemed 

To move with you as move the winds along. 
To ripple up wherever water gleamed. 
And soothed you with its fancies as you 
dreamed 

Until the very silence seemed a song, 

And all the shores of summer's sunlit deeps 
Seemed etched against the blue-horizoned 
days. 
And broad reflections of the cloudy steeps 
Swept idly down across the meadow ways : 
For this was Nature, seen as through a haze 
As when one dreams of pictures while he 
sleeps. 

5 65 



VIOLETS. 

The fields are wrapped in mantles white 

Of glittering, drifted snow, 
The earth's quick summer pulse is gone 

Yet, beating dim and slow, 
Her muffled throbs come welling up 

From distant depths below. 

It cannot be the days are dead 
Though frozen are the streams ; 

For in the sun's dull winter light 
A promised summer gleams, 

And what are winter's wraiths at last 
But ghosts of summer dreams ? 

Dream on, dream on, dear mother earth 

Till April's fire shall glow 1 
Still in my heart thy spring-tide swells 

In endless ebb and flow ; 
I see as with prophetic eyes 

The violets in the snow. 
66 



AN INDIAN SUMMER DAY. 

I SAW the East's pale cheek blush rosy red 
When from his royal palace in the sky, 
The sun-god, clothed in crimson splendor, came 
And lit the torch of day with sudden flame, 
While morning on white wings flew swiftly by 
Bringing a message that the night was dead. 

High noon, and not a murmur in the streams; 
And silence fills the hazy autumn air ; 
Sun-painted leaves drift slowly to the ground 
Amid a quiet, soft and yet profound 
And lie in russet windrows scattered there, — 
All Nature in a misty slumber dreams. 

And then upon the close of dying day 
Softly and silently as falling snow. 
The twilight comes in dusky folds and rings 
And over all a darkling shadow flings ; 
High overhead a star begins to glow 
And cow-bells tinkle faintly, far away. 

67 



ISIS. 

I AM whatever is ; for day by day 
I sparkle in each flower's richest hue, 
And with a lavish hand I scatter dew 

When twilight comes in mantle dim and gray. 

My spirit shines in every faithful star ; 

My voice is heard in all the winds that pass ; 

My name is written on each blade of grass 
And in all climes my leafy castles are. 

Earth, sea, and sky, and what are they but me ? 
Each cloud-capped mountain or each grain 

of sand ? 
1 paint the shells on an untrodden strand 
Where whispers low the long-sought Northern 
sea. 

I am whatever has been ; in the dust 
Of shattered empires and of levelled thrones 
My presence stands, — ay, even mid the 
bones 
Of coffined kings, and in their armor rust. 
68 



Where the unnumbered dead are, there am I. 

Where ivy creeps along the churchyard 
mould ; 

I gleam in the pale moonlight shining cold 
On ghostly stones where tears are never dry. 

I am the voice of centuries ; my hand 

Holds life and death, all mystery, all fate ; 
My secrets told to only those who wait 

My domain infinite o'er sea and land. 

I am whatever shall be ; though the night 
Be changed to day, though stars their courses 

fail. 
My giant forces like great vessels sail 

Unharmed, impregnable, in conscious might. 

In the long years that shall hereafter come 
I will be found by forest field and stream 
Still reigning o'er the universe supreme, 

Forever speaking, yet forever dumb. 

All darkly, darkly, in the gloom I hide 

And oh I so brightly in the sunbeams shine, 
All changes and all great emotions mine 

And in my strength and beauty calmly bide. 

69 



The veil that hides my face has ever cast 
A dazzling shadow on the path of years, 
The hope and dread with mingled joy and 
tears 

Of those who solve my mystery at last. 

Peace, restless heart : 't is not for mortal breath 
To breathe the ether of the inner skies, 
And no man's hand can lift the veil that lies 

Between the tragedies of life and death. 



70 



THE MEADOW-LARK. 

A SEA of grass on either side 
The prairie stretches far and wide, 
Its undulating line of blades 
Reflects the noontide lights and shades, 
And brings before me one by one 
The pictures wrought by wind and sun. 

And silence reigns, save for the breeze 
And muffled hum of droning bees, 
Till in the summer hush I hear 
A prairie signal sweet and clear, 
In mournful, piercing notes that mark 
The whistle of the meadow-lark. 

Like one wild cry for loved and lost 
From some lone spirit tempest-tossed. 
It wails across the waving grass. 
And, blending with the winds that pass, 
It scatters echoes at my feet 
So full of pain, so deadly sweet. 
71 



Oh ! heart of hearts, could my unrest 
Find such a song within my breast, 
My passionate and yearning cry 
Would echo on from sea to sky, 
Along the path of future years, 
And touch the listening world to tears. 



72 



SONG. 

The deft Musician's fingers 

Lo ! they lie crossed and numb, 

And tiie soul of the violin is dead 
And the magic strings are dumb. 

Closed is the old piano 

And chordless its amber keys, 

As the vanished tidal murmurs 
Of prehistoric seas. 

The singer's voice is silent 

That once was sweet and strong, 

They faded out like a wild-bird's note, 
The singer and his song. 

The maestro's touch dies with him ; 

'T is gone for good or ill ; 
And the singer's lips no echoes leave 

To linger with us still. 

And only the runes of Nature 

Abide with us for long, 
And only the wind and ripples 

Sing the eternal song. 

73 



IN THE HEART OF THE HICKORY 
TREE. 

There is never a blossom of Spring alive 

There is never a bud, he said ; 
The cruel snows through the branches drive 

And the leaves and grass are dead ; 
But the pulse of the world beat on below 

In spite of the North wind's dree, 
And a bead of sap lay all aglow 

In the heart of the hickory tree. 



There is never a rose to bloom, he cried, 

Nor the ghost of a lily tall, 
Nor a morning-glory streaked and pied 

To smile from the garden wall ; 
But a seed that slept in the frosty earth 

Held colors all fair to see. 
And the bead of sap bubbled up with mirth 

In the heart of the hickory tree. 
74 



There is never a stalk of green, I wis, 

Again to himself he said, 
No primrose pale for the winds to kiss — 

He sighed, and he shook his head ; 
Yet the snows were only the late-month rains, 

And March came following free, 
And the sap oozed down through the hidden 
veins 

In the heart of the hickory tree. 

There is never a bird in the thickets now, 

Nor a ripple upon the creek. 
Nor a leaf, he said, on the apple-bough 

However I wait or seek ; 
But a violet under the frozen clay 

Dreamed on of the days to be, 
And a bud was born that very morn 

In the heart of the hickory tree. 



75 



DEFIANCE. 

I QUESTION whether 't is worth the trouble 

The toil and travail, the sin and pain ; 
For who that blows but a painted bubble 

Shall grasp it to him and call it gain ? 
And the life you live, be \t high or humble, 

Is quickly under the grasses hid 
As into a narrow niche you tumble, 

And the clods fall thick on your cofTni-lid, 



The light of love and the spark of passion 

Shall flame on the lips and die away. 
The lips once red that are now turned ashen 

And sunk so soon into yesterday ; 
I lift my voice in a measured scorning 

Against the Gods that they raise on high. 
And dawn bring dusk, and the night bring 
morning 

I care not whether I live or die. 

76 



I knew the touch of a child's soft finger 

But lost its clasp when I loved her best 
I marked in June where the j^oung birds linger 

But the snow soon covered an empty nest ; 
And I tell you spite of your strong endeavor 

The vision melts and the fabric fails, 
While all that we are is passing ever 

Like dead leaves whirled in the Autumn 
gales. 

I turn my face to the glass of Nature 

And dip my feet in her streams again, 
And verse myself in her nomenclature 

Reading her heart as the hearts of men ; 
And I know she leads where the Gods must 
follow 

The seas survive though the creeds will pass. 
And the words of man seem poor and hollow 

To a grain of sand or a blade of grass. 

A few score years, and the race is ended 

And we from the world are outward thrust, 
And each with his mother-earth is blended 

Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. 
Save here and there where the high soul sunders 

A dread command while the rest stand dumb, 
And daring the strength of Jove's own thunders 

Steals fire from heaven for those to come. 
77 



POETA NASCITUR, NON FIT. 

And dost thou think to tempt the muse 
By such vain arts as lovers use ? 

And wilt thou bring her learned thought 
In cunning form of rhythm wrought > 

And wilt thou mould in rigid rules 
Cold fables from the classic schools ? 

Do all of this, and then how long 
Will sound the echo of thy song ? 

No longer than shall tremble in 
A cracked and shattered violin 

.Some chord-wave loosened by the bow 
That fades in briefest tremolo. 

Why I teach the lark to sing by note, 
And Pan to play his reeds by rote, 

But never hope Parnassian height 
By Art's mere imitative flight. 

78 



Nay ! dive thou deep in Nature's heart, 
And tear her leaves and grass apart ; 

Wander thou forth in sun and rain 
To tread the paths of joy and pain ; 

Live, toil, and strive, and keenly scan 
The mystery of thy fellow-man ; 

And, most of all, know thou the spell 
Of Love's high heaven and dungeoned hell,- 

And then, if on thy natal morn 
A singer's soul was in thee born, 

Perchance the anguish may be thine 
To touch the lips of song divine. 



79 



THRENODY. 

The roving hawk will find his mate 

And stars companions be. 
But I, — I only stand and wait, — 

There is no mate for me. 

The stranger rivers meeting blend 

And journey to the sea ; 
I have, mayhap, a single friend 

But none who watch for me. 

Nor woman's kiss hath bound me fast 
Nor creed hath bent my knee ; 

The fields, and blue skies overcast, — 
These are enough for me. 

Alone, unsolved, I bide my time 
Till death shall set me free, 

A man whose lips were steeped in rhyme, 
Oh, dreamers, pray for me ! 
So 



WARP AND WOOF. 



THE KING'S LOVE AND HATE. 

*' Oh I King," a courtier cried, 

As low obeisance made he, 

*' Whom hatest lliou the most?" 

The King replied, 

" Those who already have betrayed me.' 

"This question then I bring, 

Whom lov'st thou most, I pray thee ? " 

" With my best love I love " 

So said the King — 

*' Those who hereafter will betray me." 



83 



THE MESSAGE OF THE TOWN, 

Look up to the stony arches 

"Where art and mammon meet, 

There 's a sound where Traffic marches 

A call in the City street, 

For a voice is ever ringing 
" Gird up your loins and flee 
I will harden your heart or break it 
If you will abide with me." 



Go forth with a noble yearning. 

Give heed to the griefs of men, 

And the years will find you turning 

To that mockino- voice aLiain, 

Which ever recurrent whispers 
Like the chant of the restless sea 
" I will harden your heart or break it 
If you will abide with me." 
^4 



No time for the touch of gladness 

Nor yet for the boon of tears, 

We toss in a cloud of madness 

Whirled round by the whirling years 
And an echo lingers always 
From which we are never free 
" I will harden your heart or break it 
If you will abide with me." 



Aye I carve it in iron letters 

High over your widest gate, 

Since we all must wear the fetters 

Who seek the appointed fate, 

And the winds shall bring the message 
Through all of the days that be 
" I will harden your heart or break it 
If you will abide with me." 



8s 



'' L'ALLEGRO." 

A RED light on the Tiber came 

From scarlet banners waved on high ; 

A city wrapped in smoke and flame, 
With blazing columns lit the sky. 



Above the tramp of rushing feet, 
And o'er the conflagration's din, 

Arose, in measure sharp and sweet, 
The music of a violin. 



S6 



THE PROMPTER. 

From underneath the stage's floor 
A man steps upward through a door, 
Leaving behind the shrilling din 
Of cello tuned, and violin, 
And hears across the building vast 
One far, faint flute-note ripple past. 



Within the wings he takes his stand 

His well-thumbed book in lean right hand, 

And pieces out from page to page 

The fool's broad jest or tyrant's rage. 

The lover's lisp, the lady's sigh 

And headlong warrior's battle-cry. 

Not his to mouth the motley lines 
A man of gestures, and of signs ; 
Of humble port and modest mien 
With presence hardly felt or seen, 
And yet whose long forefinger gives 
The cue to him who dies or lives. 

87 



Not his to mark the long-drawn pause, 
The silence — and the wild applause 
Y/hen nature, through the actor's art 
Smiles in on each awakened heart, 
For though all others have their share 
None heeds the patient prompter there. 



I cry you mercy ; by God's rood, 

When death has stripped them, prone and nude. 

When each to heaven turns his brow 

This prompter shall not rate as now, 

But as a man, among the men, 

Be reckoned with the faithful then. 



88 



APPLE-BLOSSOMS. 

Not apple-blossoms for the old home's sake ; 

The hill-side farm, the orchard vistas fair, 

Youth, hope, and mother, all my treasures 

there 

Not apple-blossoms, lest my heart should 

break. 



89 



THE WRAITH OF LOCHBURY. 

Gray battlements of ancient stone, 
With clinging ivy overgrown, 
And granite towers rising free 
Above the night-imprisoned sea, 
Announced in stern and rugged mien 
The feudal castle of MacLean. 



And up and down the gloomy shore 

A spectral steed his rider bore. 

As through the night, with haunting cry, 

A wailing horseman galloped by 

Along the lonely ocean sands, 

And beat his breast with fleshless hands. 

Far, far away, 'neath Spanish skies, 
A Scottish chieftain dying lies. 
And with his glazing eyes he sees 
His castle walls, while on the breeze 
He hears a wailing, moaning cry, 
And phantom hoof-beats gallop by. 
90 



THE SPHINX. 

Couched in the dull Egyptian sands, dumb, 
and yet with a voice pathetic 
That seems to come from the stony lips, that 
ever seems to say : 
*• I am a part of the old-world life^ of a buried 
age prophetic. 
I am a rock that the waves of time will 
never wear away. 



*' Out of the bygone years I gaze, desertward, 
and my meditation 
Sees a fold of the tawny sands, where once 
was a palace tall ; 
And I hear the heart of the great world beat, 
in swinging, slow pulsation ; 
The great world's heart that throbs the same 
though Pharaohs rise and fall. 
91 



" Kings and queens and the nations all, fading 
out in the dust together, 
And centuries long that vanished in ' to-mor- 
row' and 'to-day' : 
For each gray age has floated past as light as 
an ibis feather. 
Since I was hewn, and left alone, in these 
sad wastes to stay. 



^' And in the visions that come to me thro' the 
curtains rent asunder 
That hide the years — I have heard a sound, 
all rhythmical and vast ; 
The mail-clad tread of mighty hosts — like a 
measured roll of thunder. 
The tramp of the Caesar's legions, the 
Romans marching past. 



"This, all this, I see and hear, in the sun and 
moon and night winds blowing. 
In sunset fire, and in the moon, the sheen of 
whose silver disc. 
Is scattering down the cold white rays on 
Nilus softly flowing. 
And searching out the pictured scenes on 
ruin and obelisk. 
92 



'* Come what come may, or sun or storm, the 
river's calm or the desert's bleakness 
And still I couch in the shifting sands and 
watch the years alone, 
Holding within my giant grasp the strength of 
art and the sculptor's weakness, 
The man who died — the thought that lived 
in everlasting stone." 



93 



HE TRAVELS THE FASTEST WHO 
TRAVELS ALONE. 

The stirrup-cup 's drained and the messenger 

flown — 
He travels the fastest who travels alone. 

A shout of " God speed you," the gleam of a 

spur 
And the hearth-flame behind sinks away in a 

blur. 

A form in the darkness that fades on the sight 
And the clatter of hoofs as he rides through 
the night. 

Not a star overhead, nor a neighboring lamp 
Save the fire-fly's glimmer hi marsh-vistas damp. 

Or a spark where the horse-shoe strikes sharp 

on a stone. 
He travels the fastest who travels alone. 

And onward and onward each long mile is 

passed 
With the echo of horses' hoofs following fast, 
94 



Till the gray light of dawn o'er the highway 

he sees 
And a crowd and a scaffold loom black through 

the trees. 

When with foam from the charger white- 
flecking his sleeve 

He spurs him still faster, wild crying, " Re- 
prieve I " 

And death like a feather now backward is 

blown 
He travels the fastest who travels alone. 



95 



AN OLD DAGUERREOTYPE. 

Two clear, grave eyes, that wondering look 

From some forgotten long ago ; 

A childish face that cannot know 

The secrets hidden in the book 

Of future years, 

The care and toil, the busy strife, 

The joys that jewel every life, 

The tears. 



From that lost time — from childhood-land 

The wistful, speaking, hazel eyes 

Look out as on unclouded skies ; 

Where glowing hopes rise hand in hand, 

And sunshine streams 

Along the path of breaking day, 

While all the shadows fade away, 

Like dreams. 

96 



Thus kept by art's all-saving grace 
Peeps from a distant hazy nook 
Of time gone by this sunny look 
Upon a young, untroubled face, 
That holds within 

The boyish eyes, those limpid springs 
No taint of earth or earthly things. 
No sin. 



97 



A PRODIGAL. 

I HAVE marked the gleam of the ploughshare 

And known of the sweat of toil, 
Where the breath from the horses' nostrils 
puffed 

And the inky curve of soil, 
Rolled away in undulations 

As a black-snake leaves his coil. 

When the axe in the timber sounded 
And the wedge and the frizzled maul, 

Had found the heart of many an oak 
And many a hickory tall ; 

Where branching woodland giants crashed 
Down thundering to their fall. 

I have watched the paling starlight 

As a sign of the task begun, 
And my feet were wet by the midnight dews 

And my brow by the midday sun, 
Till the harvest moon in the southern skies 

Made shift for a day's work done. 

98 



I have sat in the herder's saddle 
In the sleet and the blinding rain, 

And heard the roll of hurrying hoofs 
Beat time on a hollow plain, 

And whoso works with a strenuous hand 
Has labored not in vain. 

And at last in a towered city 
Scarce more than a boy I stood, 

Where the smoke hung over the steeples 
Like the folds of a witch's hood ; 

And life was a sea before me 

Where those survived who could. 

But I breasted the coming billows 
And swept their crests aside, 

And never a sea or dark or deep 
Could drown me in its tide ; 

And held my peace and made no moan 
Where some, I think, had died. 



And each for himself I found it 

However you stay or seek. 
And bitter the strife as in olden days 

When Greek met face to Greek ; 
And whatever it meant for the strongest 

God pity the young and weak. 
99 



Yet ever a will sustained me 

When even Love did fail, 
And made my soul as strong as though 

I had looked on the Holy Grail, 
And the deadliest arrow Fate could launch 

Fell blunted from its mail. 

And always an eagle-spirit 

That walls could not confine, 
And the bane of the three temptations 

Of woman, song% and wine. 
And the husks of a keen repentance 

The bed with the sodden swine. 

And or ever a God seemed distant 

In my direst hour of need. 
Or the woman's hand I leaned upon 

Had pierced like the broken reed, 
Or I passed with lip still thirsting 

From the cup of an empty creed. 

Then I turned to tlie one true solace 

On life's wide battlefield, 
A pride as the pride of Lucifer's 

Which dared but did not yield — 
And whoso has it at its best 

Lacks neither sword nor shield. 



And each to his own accounting 

I stand prepared for mine, 
When death shall call for volunteers 

To step from the foremost line ; 
And none will go more hopefully 

Nor with lighter heart than mine. 

And he who shrinks 'neath the lash of Fate 

I hold is a base-born clod. 
And my steps bend not to a Father's house 

Nor yet to the house of God, 
For the strength of pride doth still abide 

To spurn the chastening rod. 



lOI 



ACCURSED. 

From zone to zone, from east to west 
In all the lands of sun and snow, 
My weary footsteps to and fro 
Through laggard centuries have pressed, 
And evermore by land and sea 
A haunting vision follows me, 
By night and day. 

Upon the cloud-arched stage of Time 

The curtain'd years roll to the skies ; 

And there before my dazzled eyes 

A thorn-crowned Presence stands sublime. 

I hear a voice — I hear it now — 

In ringing accents, '• Tarry thou 

Until I come ! '' 



102 



ISHMAEL. 

Upon my vow I stand or fall, 

Lo ! here am I alone, 
My hand against the hands of all 

And theirs against my own ; 
My roof the stars, my bed the sod, 

The desert-home for me. 
No hope nor fear of man or God 

So be it, let it be. 



My hairy sandals on my feet, 

My dagger in my hand. 
With shaggy courser eagle-fleet 

To skim the level sand. 
The quiver o'er my shoulder hung 

The bow across it bent. 
My gage against the whole world flung 

And so I rest content. 
103 



I know not, I, the touch of grief, 

Of pity or of tears ; 
Nor heed as much as falling leaf 

The passing of the years ; 
Long since Death sealed my early vow 

And often shall again, 
Time stamps no Cain-mark on my brow 

For these vile sons of men. 



Cold in the cloudless sky above 

Float the eternal stars, 
And cold my breath to thoughts of love 

But 'neath my battle-scars 
Leaps the red blood in warmth elate 

To meet my hated foe, 
As forth I rush to seek my fate 

With dagger and with bow. 



The blood of man has stained my hands 

My heart has turned to stone. 
I roam a scourge along the sands, 

A king without a throne. 
The very lion shuns my path, 

And legends utter when 
I raised my voice in first-time wrath 

Against the sons of men. 
104 



MAGDALEN. 

Had she sold herself for lucre, were it but by 

the laws of man 
She had reigned it proudly and royally and had 

never known the ban, 
For the world can bend and stoop and cringe 

to a married courtesan. 



The doors of the temples shut her out that 

welcome the righteous in 
And she sits by a homeless hearth and waits 

with ghosts of might-have-been, 
And the Pharisees in the market-place will 

tell you of her sin. 

And still where the earth's broad highways 
trend she weaves her lingering spell 

As a spider weaves his filmy web and lurks in 
an inner cell 

And her feet go down to death they say, and 
her steps take hold on hell. 
105 



But choose from a thousand maxims wise, 
fine-sifted through wisdom's sieve 

And never a one will teach mankind the sound 
of the word "forgive," 

Yet this for her arts and her blandishments — 
how else is she to live ? 



And there's never a man shall raise his voice 

to speak for Magdalen, 
And never a woman will take her hand nor 

teach her hope again ; 
Who recks of the Man of Calvary when the 

church has said "Amen"? 



1 06 



RE-INCARNATION. 

A CHILD, he played as other children do, 
Mourned not the old, nor reckoned of the new. 

A man, he strove with dogma and with creed 
To solve the problem of the spirit's need. 

Then old age came, and made him as a child, 
With earth and God and all things reconciled. 



107 



THE LOST SOULS. 

In vast mid-space, upon a cloudy steep 
The lost souls gathered, as apart from all 
Where looking downward they could see the 

pall 
Of floating smoke o'er Satan's donjon keep, 
And gazing upward through an azure deep 
They marked the outlines of the jasper wall 
That circled Eden, and the towers tall 
Where golden chimes sank fitfully to sleep. 

These were the souls who, living, loved and 

lost, 
But after life had sought and claimed their own 
And fled with them in starry realms to dwell. 
And side by side along the heights they crossed 
'Mid the white lilies of the moon outblown 
Not needing Heaven and not fearing Hell. 



1 08 



SUNSET. 

A river's shores — the current's sweep be- 
tween 
Flecked with dead leaves ; while here and 

there a stone 
Rears its rude bulk against the ripples thrown ; 
In shadowy stretch of undulating green 
The broad banks lie, and further on the sheen 
Of purple thickets fleetingly is shown ; 
And o'er the placid waters brooding lone 
Twilight and Darkness, weird twin-sisters lean. 

And one still pool as slow the day declines, 
Holds close the sunset's glory in its deeps 
In colors that no mortal tongue could name ; 
And now as night comes etched in dusky lines 
Low in the limpid water fitful sleeps 
One last red gleam that shimmers like a flame. 



109 



LILITH. 

I, WANDERING in a certain waste alone 
In lands deserted, where no wild bird called, 
Before the desolation stood appalled 
That stretched away in dreary monotone ; 
The wind went muttering like a withered crone 
And stunted trees in grayish moss were shawled, 
A marshy mist, slow moving, upward crawled 
And sullen nature brooded, turned to stone. 

But on a sudden by a swampy space 
In weaving lines of breezy disarray, 
A host of saffron lilies thronged the air, 
And I bethought me of a woman's face 
As fair, as sweet, as languorous as they, 
The sunlight on her tangled yellow hair. 



no 



SONNET TO MUSIC. 

I ASK not meat, a little bread will do 

And cup of water dipped from some clear 

stream 
Where lazily the ripples croon and dream 
Adown the shining cresses slipping through ; 
No more than this, for when Pan comes to woo 
The silence with his pipings, then I seem 
To lose myself in rapture, as I deem 
Were lost, long since, Ulysses and his crew ; 
For as the western winds go rustling by 
O'er treetops tall and rushes sere and bent 
And herd-boy brown with willow-whistle dry 
Shrills out his tunes through the lone meadow 

sent 
Then fill mine eyes to blindness there for I — 
Give me but music and I rest content. 



Ill 



MIDNIGHT AT SEA. 

Tall rise the mighty masts, while ashen sails, 
Distended by the fast increasing breeze 
Throw ghostly shades upon the heaving seas ; 
The glittering moon alternate shines and pales 
And fraught with ancient echoes of the gales 
The cordage sighs, like wind-swept forest 

trees ; 
And then with one long swerve the vessel frees 
Her form from all the shadows, as she scales 
A giant steep, while down the moonlight pours ; 
And on and on the myriad billows roll 
In endless race across the pulsing deeps, 
Until at last where far Australia sleeps, 
Each wave falls headlong on the sandy shores 
Like a spent runner sinking at the goal. 



THE SPINNING DERVISH, 

He wears a turban round his head 
And on his feet are pointed shoes, 
While from his waist a skirt outspread 
Such as the tawny Arabs use 
Describes a circle from his hips 
And rustles like a lady's fan, 
His teeth gleam whitely 'twixt his lips- 
The silent Oriental man. 



Then slow he turns from left to right 
His arms outstretched, long, lean and browned 
By suns that on Sahara smite. 
And round and round and round and round 
He moves in circles slow unfurled 
From where his journey first began, 
Like dust upon the desert whirled 
The silent Oriental man. 
8 113 



Round, round and round, my eyes grow dim ; 
His whirling figure seems to change. 
The very earth goes round with him 
Forsooth I but this is passing strange, 
A broken glimpse of twisting heels 
And ornaments of beaten brass, 
I catch, as round the Dervish reels 
While one by one the minutes pass. 

The half-hour wanes ; and on he spins 
With hands uplifted, clenched and still, 
A mighty maze of outs and ins 
Impelled by weird fanatic will. 
In cloudless skies the far sun burns 
And shadows lengthen by a span. 
While round and round and round he turns 
The silent Oriental man. 

So are we all from God's right hand 
Sent spinning into boundless space. 
And when upright we cannot stand 
Death comes and thus we lose our place. 
Spin, spin, ye mortals, I can smile, 
Remembering this primeval plan 
Watching with steady gaze meanwhile 
The silent Oriental man. 



114 



THE MEN OF THE SHOVEL AND 
PICK. 

The last tie was laid on the highway of steel 

And fastened the last shining rail ; 
The long parallels stretched away to the west 

On a road-bed of gravel and shale ; 
And round by a curve was an onlooking crowd, 

Where an arm was uplifted to strike, 
While glistened below in the sun's dying rays, 

The head of a solid gold spike. 

There was sparkle of wine as they drove the 
spike home 
And eloquence thrilling to feel ; 
The hand-clasp of continents almost it seemed 

This masculine gripping of steel ; 
But over it all swept a whirling of wraiths 

As of snow-flakes foregathering thick, 
Dim forms of forgotten ones, brawny, un- 
couth, 
The men of the shovel and pick. 
"5 



Red-shirted, shag-bearded, and hairy of chest 

As Hercules rugged and strong, 
They loomed like the heroes tense-muscled 
and stark 

That up from Mythology throng, 
And all else faded out as the mist does at dawn 

While the clouds lifted, fold upon fold, 
And tinged by the sunset, and framed in its 
rays 

A vision of battle unrolled. 

For I saw a wide desert of alkali gray 

Where the dews never gladdened the plain, 
Where no plant save the cactus uplifted its 
leaves 

And no drop ever fell of the rain ; 
Yet here were these men in the pitiless sun. 

In the stifling and dust-laden air. 
With their shovels and picks that were bran- 
dished on high 

By knotted arms, sunburned and bare. 

And I saw them again in the cold autumn rain 

When the merciless desert was passed. 
Saw them face the sharp sleet and enveloping 
snows 
In the storm-wake down-followinc: fast ; 
ii6 



But they faltered not, failed not, nor looked 
they behind 
As those who grow weary and sore, 
For each man was a knight and the weapons 
he had 
Were the shovel and pick that he bore. 

And I saw them once more, when their eyes 
had beheld 

The Pacific's blue density roll. 
And their lips were unclosed with the eagerness 
then 

Of a runner who bends to the goal ; 
And from out of the ages an echo uprose 

Far-reaching and drifted to me, 
A shout from the dust, call it dust if you will, 

Of " Thalassa, Thalassa, the sea 1 1" 

So I give not a thought to the spike of pure 
gold 

That finished the highway of steel. 
Since the noblest is highest, not metal but men. 

And stamped with humanity's seal ; 
And larger they loom, and still faster they come 

As the snow-flakes foregathering thick. 
While I feel as I gaze that the last shall be first. 

These men of the shovel and pick. 

117 



ECCE SIGNUM. 

The wealth of Croesus one had gained, 

One told his ancient line ; 
Another honors high attained — 

They died, and made no sign. 

One yielded life his friend to save, 

A beggar one did dine ; 
One sang a song to free the slave — 

They died, but made the sign. 

Oh, thou whose memory is the cross, 
And crown of thorns divine ; 

Dear Christ, let me not know that loss 
To die, and make no sign. 



ii8 



THE BAR SINISTER. 

There was a cruel king in olden times 
Long, long ago, and like a subtle web, 
His castle lay with drawbridge and with moat, 
Portcullises, and sombre donjon keep ; 
And he, like some mailed spider, kept aloof 
Till strangers came, wayfarers passing by. 
And then he lured them to his inner halls 
And kept them close in stern captivity. 

So once there came a knight of goodly port 
A youthful knight, and singing as he rode, 
And past the gloomy castle would have spurred, 
Had not the king, Ah ! cunning were his ways, 
Sent forth a seneschal in armor dressed 
Of inlaid gold, who bade the knight to pause. 
Until the message from the castle gates 
Had been delivered and an answer given. 
119 



And thus began the wily seneschal 
'' My king doth send his greeting, and he says, 
" That so ye come within his castle walls 
•' And enter in his service, so ye shall 
" Be leader of his knights, and glory reap 
" Such as no leader yet of high renown, 
'' Hath ever topp'd ; not Lion-Heart himself, 
'* The black-faced Richard, shall be peer of 
thine/' 



And said the listening knight with mien un- 
moved 
" I enter not within thy liege's walls/' 



Then back returned the stately seneschal 
And after him came out a wrinkled sage. 
Some dark magician of those feudal days — 
And heaped were both his palms with jewels 

rare, 
Lone diamonds that held the steely flash 
Of winter moonlight on a naked sword, 
Emeralds as green as dense, unsounded seas, 
And redder than the stain of roses bruised 
Yea I ruddier than January's sun. 
Rubies he held, and sapphires too were there 
That paled and gleamed alternate to the sight. 



I20 



And quoth the ancient one, '* Behold I bring 
" All these and more, with countless hoards of 

gold 
" For thee intact, an thou wilt come with me 
"To serve my king, who waits thy gracious 

word." 



And said the listening knight in cold disdain 
" I enter not within thy liege's walls." 

Then to the castle, lingering went the sage 
While back returned to greet the waiting 

knight, 
A woman of such presence that she seemed 
Akin to that famed Helen of the Greeks, 
Whom nations battled for in days agone ; 
For tall was she, and graceful as an elm 
And robed in white, with lilies at her throat, 
Wind-blown her hair, that like a torrent fell 
Full to her feet, a cataract of bronze ; 
And in her eyes the lights and shadows 

changed 
Of languor and of quick intelligence, 
While every feature was all womanly 
And beautiful beyond perfection's charm. 



121 



Her arms were bare, and smooth as ivory 
While at her side she placed a silver harp, 
And over all its strings her fingers ran 
As light as thought, and following music came 
Like running water, blent with plaintive winds ; 
And sweet it was, and powerful and strange, 
As when one rises from a bed of boughs, 
And stands at midnight under solemn stars 
Listening alone, and hears the breezes thrill 
With nameless chords the silence of the trees ; 
And when she sang the passion of her voice 
Rang clear and high, then melted into tears. 

And thus she gave her message to the knight 
" If in thy gramercy thou seest fit 
"To serve my liege, my father, and our land 
" Lo 1 I am thine, and king thou 'It be in time 
^' With all the store of treasure promised thee, 
'^ And high renown, as said the seneschal ; 
" Wealth, glory, love, all, all is offered thee." 

And said the listening knight with scornful 

smile 
*' I enter not within thy liege's walls." 



122 



And slowly back, the princess castlewards 
Her steps retraced, and brought his answer 

there ; 
Whereat the king's grim forehead wrinkled 

deep 
The while he gave the mandate " Let him 

pass." 

But at the dawn, the curious seneschal 

Upon the highway where the knight had 

paused, 
Did early search, and where the cavalier 
Had made dismount to tighten saddle girths, 
He found a sign that blanched his swarthy 

cheek, 
The print of cloven hoofs upon the sands. 



123 



THE PRODIGALS. 

When the roses of summer were budding and 
blooming 
And the yellow wheat bent 'neath its burden 
of gold, 
The Prodigal Son came, world-weary and 
tattered. 
To the home where his footsteps had echoed 
of old. 



And they clung to his garments with tears and 
caresses, 
Till the cup of his welcome ran over with 

And the flowers of love and forgiveness were 
woven 
In a blossoming crown for the Prodigal 
Boy. 

124 



When the icicles hung from the eaves and the 

branches, 

And the winter winds moaned round the 

dwellings of men, 

Forsaken and homeless, the Prodigal Daughter 

Crept back to the home of her girlhood 



But they turned her away in the storm and 
the darkness 
To the icy-cold winds with their chill, 
piercing breath, 
And the pitiless curses that followed her 
footsteps 
Were fierce as the tempest and cruel as 
death 1 



121 



DEAR HEART, SWEET HEART. 

Dear heart, sweet heart, your baby hands 

Have touched and passed this floating world, 
Have loosed their hold on life's frail strands 

And now upon your breast lie furled 
Twin blossoms of eternal peace. 

Like lilies on untroubled streams, 
When the rude winds have made surcease 

And summer's glory drifts and dreams. 

Dear heart, sweet heart, your waxen lips 

Shall never touch my cheek again, 
For they are steeped in an eclipse 

Which lies beyond my mortal ken ; 
And that great sphinx of death who keeps 

His silent vigil over all, 
Has left your face as one who sleeps — 

Save for the bosom's rise and fall. 
126 



Dear heart, sweet heart, your tender eyes 

With all their depths of wondering, 
Are closed for aye ; as droops and dies 

The first sweet violet bank of spring ; 
And their far look of thought unthought 

Shall never come again, or be, 
Since this remorseless change was wrought. 

That closed the gates 'twixt thee and me. 

Dear heart, sweet heart, the lonely way 

Seems doubly steep since you are gone, 
The dawn has faded out of day, 

The rose has faded out of dawn ; 
And I, alas, must needs go down 

My hand unclasped by any child. 
To wear the Cross without the crown 

And walk through life unreconciled. 

Dear heart, sweet heart, 'mid hopes and fears 

I bend and kiss you, thus, and thus ; 
Mine eyes are dim with brimming tears 

My lips with grief are tremulous ; 
My baby boy — that you should die 

And out into the darkness go, 
Beyond my broken-hearted cry, 

I loved you so, I loved you so. 



27 



THE CHRISTIAN. 

There was a tawny woman of the sands 
Lithe-limbed and rounded, and who moved at 

ease 
With sinuous grace as some wild leopardess 
On desert wilds ; and black her piercing eyes 
As the great vulture's of the snowy peaks, 
Who all day long hung pendent in the clouds 
And watched the lazy caravans pace by. 

And whiles there came a traveller in those 

ways 
And sat him down beside the desert well, 
Ate the dry dates and cooled his parching lips 
And told strange tales of a mysterious God 
Who ruled the world, and taught the willing 

stars, 
To whirl submissive in their orbits round ; 
And sang his praises with inspiring voice 
Till in the breast of this lone creature leaped 
A pulsing flame of hope that flickered up 
As dawn's faint tapers light unwilling skies. 
128 



Over her troubled fancy then there came 
A vague outreaching of awakened life, 
And filled with helpful longing for her kind, 
She left the green oasis of her youth 
And traversed many a mile of burning sands, 
Until the gates of pagan cities loomed 
Before her pathway menacing and bare. 

And entering in, with rapt, transfigured face, 
She spent her days and sacrificed her nights 
Until at length, the pagan language learned, 
With eager lips she told the Christian creed, 
The love of God, the spotless life of Christ, 
Faith, hope, and charity, and tenderness. 

And when the pagans made a holiday 
They gave her to the lions for her pains. 



129 



AS FOR ME, I HAVE A FRIEND. 

Let the sower scatter seed 

Where the crumbling furrows blend ; 
Let the churchman praise his creed 

The beginning and the end ; 

As for me, I have a friend. 

Does the sun forget to shine 

And the wind blow sere and chill ? 

Does the cluster leave the vine, 
And the ice begird the rill ? 
I shall rest contented still. 



Must the rose be stripped of leaf 
When the waning June has passed? 

Shall an autumn voice its grief 
In the lorn November blast ? 
What of that, a friend will last. 
130 



Why should I, then, make complaint 
To the days that round me roll ? 

She my missal is, and saint, 

Clad in womanhood's white stole, 
She, the keeper of my soul. 

Not love's chalice to my lips, 

Not that bitter draught she brings. 

Which as Hybla's honey drips 

And like bosomed asp-worm stings. 
No I she tells of happier things. 

Simple friendship, just that much 
To enfold me as a strand 

Of her hair might ; and the touch 
Of a gracious, welcoming hand 
That I grasp, and understand. 

Let death ope or lock his gate 
Let the lilies break or bend. 

And the iron will of fate 

Sorrows now or fortune send, 
As for me, I have a friend. 



131 



IN PASSING. 

Through halls whose carven panels held 

A host of cherubim, 
Up stairways wide I wandered on 

Through curtained vistas dim, 
And ever as my footsteps came 

By alcove, hall and stair, 
A myriad mirrors started up 

And caught my shadow there. 

Sometimes my profile paled and sank 

A smile upon my lips. 
Sometimes a blur my features were 

Swift darkening to eclipse ; 
But following as these figures fled 

Faint ghosts of grayish gleams — 
I walked beside, as one who walks 

Companioned in his dreams. 
132 



Oh I winding years that round my path 

Like mirrors flash and pass, 
Once, always, do you hold for me 

The wraith within the glass ; 
Some night or day, some star or sun 

(As what should say, " Beware T') 
Reveals in your dead seasons' flight 

My shadow passing there. 



ns 



FOAM-WRAITHS AND 
DRIFTWOOD. 



THE SEA. 

Like some lone, wild creature that paces all 
day, 
Back and forth behind bars in its dumb, 
strong wish to be free, 
So paces forever all haggard and gray, 

On its earth-bound shores, the mysterious 
soul of the sea. 

All through the night, when silvery moon and 
stars 
Gleam from their heights above, on the 
restless waters below. 
And all day long, still beating against its bars. 
Surges the might of the Ocean in endless 
ebb and flow. 

Ebb and flow, in a mournful ceaseless pacing. 
Shaking its barriers firm, with tireless, 
tremulous hands. 
And its steps in sadness tracing and slowly 
retracing 
On prison floors of pallid and shifting sands. 
137 



DERELICT. 

Unheeded from the main-top mast 

Her fluttering pennon sweeps ; 
The anchor from the cat-head hangs 

No hand the tiller keeps ; 
No sailors man her creaking yards 

No storms her ways restrict, 
As on through wastes of billowy seas 

She wanders, derelict. 



Her skipper is old Boreas 

Her master is the sea ; 
No shout across the plunging waves 

May reach to such as she ; 
And woe to that unhappy wretch 

Who signals her to save, 
For she is naught but passionless 

And passive as the grave. 

138 



For her the vast and briny deep 

That still unceasing rolls, 
The veering change of time and tide 

The tropics, and the poles ; 
What recks she now of welcoming port 

Or voyage yet to be ? 
What boots the cry of " Ship ahoy" 

To vagrants of the sea ? 



Alike to her the seasons pass 

With sunlight or with snow, 
Alike to her are dusk and dawn. 

And refluent ebb and flow. 
Of rain or shine she recketh not 

Nor scent of pine or palm, 
And one to her the miracles 

Of hurricane and calm. 



No hope is centred in her fate 

No souls upon her sail, 
Companioned only by the winds 

That through her rigging trail, 
For her no hands are clasped in prayer 

Nor anxious eyes bedimmed. 
As black against the moon's bright disc 

Her sombre spars are limned. 
139 



But light and shade shall still be hers 

The white wake ofT to lee — 
Pale starlight, and a m)'riad stars 

Night-etched upon the sea, 
And in her shrouds the wind will sing 

And sea-birds round her play, 
As dumbly on her questless quest 

She loUovvs &dy by day. 



And they who for her cargo seek 

Will track the seas in vain ; 
Will plough the wave, but never reap, 

A harvest from the main ; 
For her tall masts the lookout keen 

In vain the skies will scan, 
Abandoned — she shall know no more 

The tyranny of man. 



But with the wind and wave and foam 

In freedom will she toss, 
And spread her canvas to the breeze 

As some great albatross ; 
And proudly shall her dark prow dip 

As courtiers bend the knee 
To greet their sovereign, as she greets, 

Her sovereign lord, the sea. 
140 



And thus a wraith, a mote, a speck, 

In watery solitudes. 
She sails, and hears the siren song 

Of ocean's circe-moods ; 
For neither home nor harbor bound 

Nau^'ht shall her course restrict, 
While, like men's souls in worlds to come 

She wanders, derelict. 



141 



AN ETCHING. 

I STOOD Upon a stretch of sandy shore, 
Around me hung the shadows of the night, 
The rising tide came creeping o'er the beach. 

Far out along the mighty ocean fell 
The garments of the dusk, fold after fold, 
And through the ebon barriers on high 
The stars looked down upon a sleeping world ; 
Fresh from the waves a rich sea-incense came 
Salt-sweet and pure, and drifted idly past, 
To wander in the midst of distant woods, 
Where violets and sweet wood-flowers grew. 

Then from the darkling seas the moon rose up, 
Up from unsounded depths and lay across 
The black expanse of waters like a shield ; 
And suddenly upon its pallid sheen 
A ship was etched, in clear-cut, stately lines, 
And seemed to hang, a picture in the sky. 
142 



With sails all spread, with pennant far out- 
stretched, 
Spars, masts and rigging, all in form exact, 
Held for a moment in a silver disc 
Etched by the wayward touch of flitting 

chance. 
So for an instant did I see it thus 
And then it vanished, quickly as a dream, 
Dropped from its shining frame to nothingness 
From shadows born to shadow-land returned. 



So men are etched upon the glass of fate ; 
So gleams and vanishes the ship of life. 



143 



DROWNED. 

Far in the folds of the pitiless deeps 

Where dense blue waters in silence go 
Back and forth as the tide-wave sweeps 

In the dusky vaults of the sea below, 
With his hair blown out in streaming strands 

And the film of death on his strange set eyes, 
A bit of plank in his tight-clenched hands, 

A sailor stretched in his slumber lies. 



Never a prayer or a burial hymn 

For one whose grave is the restless deep, 
Where waves roll on through the arches dim 

And shadows over the billows creep 
Back and forth in a ceaseless race, 

As ebbs and flows the wandering tide, 
The pallid stare of a fixed, white face. 

And nerveless arms that are flung aside. 
144 



And never a sound can reach him there 

From the blue sea's breast or its outmost rim, 
A sweetheart's cry or a mother's prayer 

Never can touch or awaken him ; 
And Gabriel's trump on the last dark day, 

Will call in vain from its briny bed, 
The sailor's soul, for it rests for aye 

With the uncalled souls mid the Ocean's 
dead. 



10 



145 



THE MERMAID'S SONG. 

In ocean reefs my home lies hid, 

And dark sea shadows o'er me 
Wind in and out the waves amid 

Or stand in gloom before me : 
Till, drifting down upon the deep 

Comes day, a message bringing 
That wakes the billows from their sleep 

And sets the shells to singing. 



I know the inner haunts of caves 

That line the rocky reaches, 
I know the secrets of the waves 

That break on lonely beaches ; 
I hear the waters come and go 

As far the ocean ranges, 
And listen to the ebb and flow 

That mark the pale moon's changes. 
146 



For me the rocks where sea-weed clings 

Like winding wreaths of laurel, 
Where spectral music rolls and rings 

Through shining groves of coral, 
For me the spell of weaving hands 

For me the meadows vernal, 
Where mermaids dance in mystic bands 

To ocean's chant eternal. 



147 



FALSE CHORDS. 

I LISTEN, but I listen all in vain, 
Amid the jangle of be-ribboned lyres 
(The which our modern poets strum upon.) 
For some heart-note, some echo of great 

thoughts 
To thrill me and uplift me like the breath 
Of sudden brine from out old ocean's breast, 
Fresh-dashing in my face a kiss of dawn. 



But so it is, that all I hear — good God, 
Is art, art, art, and sickly plaintive runes 
Of flowers, birds, and lovelorn serenades, 
In cunning form, fine moulded for the ear, 
Frail word-mosaics of these lesser days ; 
Or failing that, there comes a mystic chant 
Of dense, dull verse, whose secret lies in 

gloom, 
Swathed like a mummy in his cerements. 
148 



And these are nothing but false chords, I 

know ; 
For true-born singers smite Apollo's harp 
With something of the spirit of a god, 
And give their very life-blood to the song. 

Oh, muse of mine, let not my lyre sound 
To such vain pipings ; grant its varied moods 
A touch of tears — a voice of nature's own 
As lucid, and as free and undefiled ; 
And give it steel, and iron, like the strength 
Of clashing sabres and of bayonets 
And black-mouthed cannon, wreathed in thun- 
der clouds. 
Whose music rolls a menace o'er the skies 
Where earth is shaking to the tread of Mars. 



149 



THE SEVENTH DAUGHTER. 

The seventh daughter paced the shore 
Nor star nor moon was there in heaven, 

But boom of breakers and the roar 
Of thunder, and the lightning's levin. 

The sea leaped up and landward bore 
And she was last was born of seven. 

The dank grass bent beneath the blast 
And far and near were whitecaps flying, 

And storm-blown sea-birds as they passed 
Discordant through the night were crying, 

And on the reefs with broken mast 

A shattered ship, broached-to, was lying. 

Now bring the spell of weaving hands 
Of weaving hands and woven paces, 

Of magic, and air-plaited strands 

Of wimpled locks round elvish faces. 

While down along the dripping sands 

The white-maned surf-host romps and races. 
^50 



A rocket lights the sullen skies 
With one red flash of flame-elation, 

And slowly o'er the billov\s dies 
A cannon's dull reverberation, 

With never ending fall and rise 
Of wave on wave in swift rotation. 

They lash the women to the spars 

The rough reef grinds, the good ship lunges, 
Above the bars and round the bars 

The ocean gathers, rises, plunges, 
And through the crushed and splintered scars 

The green brine soaks as into sponges. 

Go get you gone of seventh birth 

Your arts and spells no respite gave them, 

Nor prayers indeed were aught of worth 
Since that the deep-sea forces crave them, 

And naught of all that rests on earth 
Or sits above has power to save them. 

The seventh daughter paced the shore 
The dawn had come, the storm was riven, 

Six sisters had she now no more 

Six souls had passed to hell or heaven. 

The sea was level as a floor 

And she was last was born of seven. 

151 



WHITE CAPS. 

Over the cool green wall of waves advancing 

Glistens a crested line of feathery foam, 
Till along the beach the billows scatter, glanc- 
ing 
A mist of spray as over the waters comb ; 
Then fades the white-capped crest all slowly 

sinking 
Where silent, shadowy sands are ever drinking, 
drinking. 

Into the sunlight's gleam a gray gull flashes 

Into the salt-sea air on buoyant wing, 
High above where the prisoned sea incessant 
dashes — 
Poises just for an instant, wavering, 
Veers to the right, and then its vague flight 

shifting. 
Falls to the waves, and with the waves goes 
drifting, drifting. 
152 



Over the sea, miles out, a ship is riding, 
Threading the ocean paths with oaken keel, 

And under her bow the baffled waves are 
sliding 
As over her sails the rising breezes steal, 

And in her wake a foamy track is lying 

As northward far she sails still flying, flying. 

And in my heart and soul a voice is ringing 
Like Circe's voice, and saying unto me, 

I am a voice immortal ever singing 
The glory and the sorrow of the sea ; 

Whose waves like human feet press on forever, 

Whose soul like human souls is happy never, 
never. 



^53 



THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. 

Where the tide crept up In a stealthy way 
By the reefs and hollows of Table Bay, 
The dwellings rude of the Dutchmen lay. 

And the night approached with a sign of storm 
For the winds blew cold and the winds blew 

warm, 
And cloud-rack high in the skies would form. 

And far to the right in the lone cape's lee 
A vessel surged in the wallowing sea, 
And the white-caps gleamed and the winds rose 
free. 

T was the brig that carried the Holland mails 
Through the summer's calm or the winter gales 
And her pennant streamed o'er her tawny sails. 

A giant she was in a giant's grip 
For the dark seas clung to the struggling ship 
And the salt brine down from the shrouds did 
drip. 

'54 



And her sails were wet with the glancing spray, 
As she rose through the gathering darkness 

gray, 
And her bow was headed for Table Bay. 

But the sea beat back with a sodden force 
The Dutchman's ship in its wandering course, 
And the thunder's mockery bellowed hoarse. 

And a woman waited beside a tree 

In the moan of the winds and the branches 

dree, 
For a letter to come that night by sea. 

Then shouted the mate to the skipper there 
"Turn back," so sounded his trumpet's blare, 
" Or our seams will split and our masts stand 
bare." 

But Vanderdecken drew his blade 

And the steely sheen that its flashing made 

Struck light from the all-surrounding shade, 

And his anger stood in his bristling hair, 
While his furious sword-stroke smote the air. 
As he stood alone in defiance there. 

And he swore to weather the stubborn gale 
With its rattling volleys of icy hail. 
If it stripped from the masts each tattered sail. 
155 



And to beat around for that very bay, 

And where was the one who could say him 

nay — 
" By God ! if he sailed till the judgment day." 

Then the mist grew dense and the lightning 

flashed 
And a red bolt down on the tree-top crashed 
Where a woman stood by the shore, sea-lashed. 

And the thunder tolled in the blackening clouds 
And the waves swept by in hurrying crowds, 
And a wan light paled in the creaking shrouds. 

While a scream came by from the far-off shore, 
That was hushed and drowned by the mad 

waves' roar, 
And the vessel passed and was seen no more. 

And now on that self-same fateful night 

If the seas be calm and the skies are bright, 

The ocean giveth a mystic sight. 

For a shadow-ship in a shadow-frame 

Looms out at twelve through the moonlight's 

flame 
Passing as suddenly as it came. 

156 



And a whisper thrills through the salt-sweet 

breeze, 
While a heart-throb stirs in the moving seas, 
And the tide fast out to the ocean flees. 

And a fine wind stirs in the tree-top high 
That ghostly stands in the starlit sky, 
And a sound wells up like a woman's sigh. 

But when on that night the clouds turn black 
And the huge waves follow the storm-king's 

track 
And the skies are heavy with tempest-wrack, 

Why then is seen, as a spectre gray 

Mid the shimmering mist and lightning-play 

A vessel headed for Table Bay. 

And the ship, like a lover, keeps her troth 
To her skipper's pledge — 't was a pledge for 

both — 
And the wild winds echo the Dutchman's oath. 

And a wraith waits there by the haunted tree 
While the storm wails on, and the wind blows 

free, 
For a letter which comes not in from sea. 



157 



COLOMBO. 

One day in August, fourteen ninety-two, 
So long ago in an old port of Spain, 
Where reared the skies an arc of deepest blue 
And summer's glories had begun to wane, 
In Ferdinand and Isabella's reign 
Three ships sailed out upon a fateful quest, 
Borne far across upon a watery plain 
By blandest winds against their rigging pressed. 
The creaking spars outspread, and prows 
toward the west. 

And Palos in the distance faded out 
The moss-grown quay, the grayish olive trees, 
And changing groups that slowly moved about 
Seen dimly o'er the track of sprayey seas. 
While churches, masts, and towers, even these 
At length were gone and only echoing bells 
Borne faintly on the pinions of the breeze. 
Came stealing softly o'er the heaving swells 
And fell upon their hearts like sound of ghostly 
knells. 

'58 



And all before was a lone waste immense 

Far seas unsounded and as yet unsailed, 

And shrouded in a mystery as dense 

As fabled Isis in her temple veiled, 

Yet fared they forth by storm and wave assailed 

While stretched the glistening canvas as they 

passed, 
And up aloft the listless pennants trailed, 
When dreamy calm the deep green waters 

glassed 
And white, still clouds above in the clear 

heavens massed. 

Gone was the sailor's song and cheery smile 
As steadily they drifted day by day, 
For journeying on, each home-dividing mile 
Seemed as a hand that put them far away ; 
For superstition held them in its sway ; 
And ignorance, and passion, but the man 
Whose granite will was mightier than they 
Still held his carved, black bowsprit in the vani 
And under stars and sun the restless surge 
would scan. 

For he was oak and iron, and he stood 
Among them like a lion while his air 
Had all the stern, unbending hardihood 
Of those who have done battle with despair ; 
159 



Long had he known of penury and care, 
Neglect and disappointment and disdain 
Yet kept the courage that could do and dare, 
And dauntless here through tempest, wind and 

rain 
Bore westward with his sullen crews across 

the main. 

And as they sailed sharp cloud peaks were un- 
furled 
In airy space where swam the dying sun, 
And seemed reflections of their promised world 
As rose the flame tipped summits, one by one, 
And then would fall the twilight's mantle dun 
With twinkling stars and weirdest moonlight 

glow, 
Where broken clouds along the skies would 

run 
And night-winds through the straining ropes 

would blow 
While lapped and lapped again the waters far 
below. 

And gleamed the myriad foam-streaks in their 

wake 
Pale, feathery spume, by wandering sea-birds 

crossed, 

i6o 



That melted as would melt a fragile flake, 
Of winter snows when in an eddy tossed, 
And sometimes level seas by sunlight glossed 
Basked idly where the idle vessels lay 
Within an ocean-desert's vagueness lost, 
While westward still stood out the vasty gray 
That changed not, save for weary change of 
night and day. 



But on a sudden instant to their sight 
The western world, a mystery no more. 
In emerald tints of freshest verdure bright 
Rose through the mist, the long, long-looked 

for shore ; 
Past the hoarse tumult of the breakers' roar 
Where tufted palms shot upward from the grass 
Casting their shade the shell-strewn beaches 

o'er 
While glittered fiery sands like burnished brass, 
With swinging flowery vines by pool and dank 

morass. 



I sing the gallant spirit of the man 
Colombo, he of Genoa, who drave 
His carved and blackened bowsprit in the van 
Of that wild journey o'er the trackless wave, 
II i6i 



To find a continent or fill a grave, 
Under the shadows of the western skies ; 
Who all his years to one grand purpose gave, 
And looking out from his high souFs surmise 
Saw with a prophet's gaze though through a 
dreamer's eyes. 



162 



POLPERRO. 

PoLPERRO — it lies where the Cornish Cliffs 
whiten 
Sheer heights that flash up in the light of 
the sun, 
And below each grave peak thai looms huge 
as a Titan 
The tides and the tidal sweep shimmering 
run, 
The tides and the tidal sweep, green, briny 
water 
That pours over sands where the singing 
shells be. 
The gray, pallid sands that turn hotter and 
hotter 
In the grasp of the sun by the shores of 
the sea. 

Oh I sun, there are depths where thy lambent 
rays never 
Strike, quiver or bask over lustreless sands, 
163 



Where the light and the shade shall not meet, 
shall not sever 
As the yearning of hearts or unclasping of 
hands ; 
Where the gulf-stream glides onward through 
emerald crystal 
And ripple there is none to ruffle the 
deep, 
Where not even the wail of the storm-laden 
mistral 
Disturbs the repose of the waters that 
sleep. 

And forever and ever the lone sail shall 
glisten 
And forever the fishers go down to the 
sea, 
And the drear nights shall come when the 
fisher-wives listen 
(The light on the sill and the wind in the 
tree.) 
The light on the sill and the stars in the hazes 

That leadenly drift in the lowering skies, 
While the salt spray that beats on each pale 
face that gazes 
Sharp, stingingly sharp through the wind- 
spaces flies. 

164 



And or ever or never the fisher finds haven 
And the tear will be dried by the kiss on 
the lips, 
The ripe, ruddy lips where the prayer-words 
were graven 
In the darkness and storm for the weather- 
worn ships ; 
And a child will croon low where a south 
wind shall blow you 
A sweet breath of daisies from far inland lea, 
And a long shred of sunlight shall smilingly 
throw you 
A kiss from the sea. 



'65 



HAUD A WEE MY WILLIE. 

LuiHT o' licart and careless liand 
Siller nane nor yet o' land 
Save the wee bit beach o' sand 
Hand a wee my Willie. 

Wha shall tak' his empty seat 
In the life-boat, thro' the weet, 
When the ragin' billows beat, 
Hand a wee my Willie. 



Never he did danger shirk 
Li«;ht o' day or glowVin' mirk, 
Bared his breast to face the work, 
Hand a wee my Willie. 

Foremost hand to launch the boat 
Knotted kerchief at his throat, 
Whis'lin' like the plover's note, 
Hand a wee my Willie. 
i66 



Fathoms deep he's lyin' now 
Sea-weed matted on his brow, 
Where the winds the waters plough, 
Haud a wee my Willie. 

Nane to heed o' joy or bliss 
Nane to ken nor yet to miss, 
Mither's warnin' — sweetheart's kiss, 
Haud a wee my Willie. 



167 



OFF PELICAN POINT. 

Straight out from the rocky headland, 

I swim in the soft moonshine, 
The air is heavy with shadows 

The shadows are drenched in brine, 
And the salt-sweet savor and flavor 

Thrills keen through my veins like wine. 

The chant of the shoreward breakers 

Beats up to the cliffs above, 
As restless in rhyme and rhythm 

As the tide it whispers of, 
And the sea-weed folds me and holds me 

Like the arms of her I love. 

The stark waves break at my shoulder 

The spray is tart on my lips, 
A long swell looms in the foreground 

Then back to the rearward slips, 
And the echoings hollow follow 

Where the great sea rolls and dips. 
1 68 



Low plaints of the pulsing water 
Faint chords from the under sea, 

Cool winds through the strands of starlight 
That glitter away to lee, 

And the twilight ringing and singing 
Are the sounds that come to me. 

The track of the floating moonlight 

Half beckoning lures me on. 
As though it led to the harbor 

Where the home-bound souls have gone, 
And its ghostly glimmer and shimmer 

As a dead man's face is wan. 

I lie on the sad sea's bosom 
Or with swift stroke cleaving pass, 

Where foam-crests tipped by the star-shine 
Stand high in a fluffy mass, 

And the billows down under sunder 
Over depths as green as glass. 

With stars in the skies to lend me 
Far glints from a world divine, 

I toss as a careless swimmer 
And the deep-sea joys are mine. 

Forgetting to borrow sorrow 
Throat-deep in the buoyant brine. 
169 



The boom of the surf behind me 
And the crag's sharp lines above, 

Fade out and in God's wide heaven 
Peace broods as a nesting dove, 

And the waters fold me and hold me 
Like the arms of her I love. 



170 



OFF GEORGES BANKS. 

Off Georges Banks the sun went down 

In crimson splendor gleaming, 
As past the bar a vessel sailed 

With graceful pennant streaming ; 
And in her wake across the blue 
A stormy petrel flew. 

Then from their ambush crept the winds 
To wake each sleeping billow ; 

And in their grasp the strong masts shook 
Like slender twigs of willow, 

And struck by whips of foaming spray 

The good ship bore away. 

Through darkling clouds the lightning clove 

A jagged path asunder ; 
And in the gloomy vaults o'erhead 

Deep rolled the sullen thunder ; 
While high above unnumbered graves 
Up leaped the hungry waves. 
171 



Gray rose the dawn ; and dreamily, 
As though 'twixt sleep and waking ; 

Low hipped tlie waves, as on the rocks 
Their long, green lines were breaking ; 

And in the changing sky alar. 

Paled out a single star. 

Then seaward from the lonely reefs 

The sun came up all slowly, 
Mis lirst beams touched a white, white face, 

Among the seaweed lowly, 
A dead face lashed to lloating planks 
Drowned there — olV Geori^es Banks. 



172 



ADRIFT. 



A FRAIL, rude raft, wave-tossed on midnight 
seas ; 
Three shadow-spars across the moon's gold 
glow — 
A ragged shape that rose from bended knees 
And cried '' Sail ho 1 " 



173 



TME NORTHWEST PASSAGE. 

I. 

Where Arctic currents curl and flash 
And death prowls over wastes of snow, 

Where giant icebergs sway and crash 
Into the chilling depths below, 

The Northwest passage spectral stands 

And beckons men to Polar lands. 



II. 

A ruined hut, an empty chest ; 

A blackened remnant of a sail ; — 
A tattered record tells the rest 

While northern winds in dirges wail ; 
And from the icebergs cold tears drip 
Upon a crushed and rotting ship. 



174 



A BOTTLE. 

I. 

In a cabin locker for many a year 

A bottle lay ; 
And whether the weather was fair and clear 

Or whether the Ocean was rough and gray, 
The bottle had nothing to care or fear ; 
Yet the ship was an iron oaken mass 
And the other was nothing but brittle glass — 
A bottle. 

II. 

Where the billows rose highest the storm-king 
flew 
Over the sea ; 
And the waters foamed and the wild winds 
blew, 
While the mad waves tossed in a whirling 
glee, 
And all that was left of a ship and crew 
Came, bringing its message with silent lips 
Of the perilsof those who go down in ships — 
A bottle. 
175 



MY CHAPTER. 



THE BURNING OF THE SHIPS. 

I. 

Where pillars stood with roses garlanded 
And rhythmic music, rising, rose and fell, 
And many faces turned enquiring gaze 
A man and woman met. 

Like ship to ship 
That crash together and recoil and drift 
In watery wastes and darkness, so their souls 
Felt the rebound ; and lifting up their eyes 
Overshadowed like a hand with wonderment, 
Each looked across, and in their thoughts arose 
The inward spoken question, " Who art thou ?" 

Then hand met hand and evermore the sense 
Grew, as a rose of that companionship 
Which flaunts the petal while it hides the thorn ; 
For fate, which found them in that one first 

glance, 
Held them apart, and, like the Barmecide 
Brought nothing and yet bade them eat and 

drink ; 
And heart to heart came following afterwards 
As bud will follow blossom. 
179 



This is true — 
Each man and woman has a counterpart, 
A twin-born soul which wanders up and down 
Seeking its mate ; and whether such have been 
As comrades in another world than this, 
I know not ; ask the Sibyl, but I know 
These two were for each other. 

So days went by to blend with starry nights 

And midnights paled and trembled into dawn. 

And gathering fast with still intensity 

As snows come crowding to an avalanche, 

So all their hopes came silently and sure 

To touch, and cross, and mingle, and be one. 

There may be much in silence ; most of all 
The silence of strong natures ; as an oak 
Half century old will breathless stand and wait 
Through listless summer days, nor move a leaf 
Until the storm awakes it, when it flings 
Rough branches to the winds and every root 
And limb and fibre quivers in the gale. 

So was it with these two. No word of love 
Had left their lips, and comrades they had 

seemed 
By many a stretch of sombre woods and sere, 
i8o 



By many a mile of wave-encircled sands, 
By many a field of swallow-haunted grass ; 
And they had walked the city streets and ways 
And made no sign, and heard no warning voice. 

II. 

There was a night, I think a night of nights. 
Dim lit with little stars, there was no moon, 
Wild winds across the darkness, and a note 
Of Neptune's horn beside the lonely sea ; 
And these twain passed together, and the flight 
Of breezes riotous and whirling leaves 
Went northward high above them, and a glint 
Of cloudy starlight flecked the distant sky. 

And somewhere in the lapses of the storm, 
Somewhere within the hollows of the dusk 
A sudden silence blossomed, and these two 
Solving the riddle of their lives at last 
Turned, with a wordless message on the lips, 
And like to those who have been parted long 
Clung fast to one another and were glad. 

There was no speech nor promises nor tears 
But soul to soul their higher being met 
As current meets with current where a stream 
Gains in its height and steadily flows on. 



Nor was there doubt nor lesser sense of fear, 
And star by star the constellations came 
To sleep along the waters ; and the leaves, 
The dry, dead leaves that lay across their path 
Rustled and stirred, and overhead the trees 
Made mighty moan because it came to pass. 

And yet, and yet if custom had her say 
Or sterner still that harsh dame Precedent, 
Doubt not these two did wrongly ; for the world 
Sees, spectacled with envy and distrust. 
And ever looking downward ; 

But indeed. 
Love's light keeps bright the windows of the 

soul 
And these knew neither evil nor dismay, 
Because, forsooth, a law ruled so and so 
A custom this, a principle thus much. 
But simply said, "Thy hand and mine inwove 
There is not that which comes 'twixt me and 

thee." 



I question not of usage nor of creed. 
And care not, lacking that subservience 
Which doffs the hat to mediocrity 
And worships still the outward shell of things ; 
182 



For there are times and trials when the mind 
Can reckon not by means of rule and rote, 
But with its present doubts enstranded round 
Must cut the gordian knot and doubt no more. 

And so they made their compact and were wise, 
And burned the ships behind them as they 

passed 
Like those old hardy Norsemen when they 

came 
To shores unconquered, and thus new and 

strange. 

And hand in hand they wandered on and on 
And heart with heart they vanished from my 

sight. 
And soul to soul I doubt not now they stand 
Upon the heights that further inland lie, 
Those happier heights, free-stretching and 

remote 
Where bloom the lilies of the dawn and shine 
Midsummer suns on grassy slopes and green. 



183 



MY LADY OF LILIES. 

She with her serious moods, and her moods 
fantastic, 
Whimsical, various, sad and glad, a woman, 
in just a w^ord, 
Now with a tender tone and again with a tone 
sarcastic 
By passion and impulse swayed as the deep 
sea depths are stirred. 
But I love her, and under her touch my soul 
grows plastic 
And just to think of her stills my heart and 
my eyes are blurred. 

For God's best work after all at the best was 
woman 
Judge her and test her and note her faults, 
no doubt you can, 
But indeed, as the world's page reads she is 
yet more human 
Loving and faithful and more forgiving than 
lesser man, 

184 



And ever since Adam the natures of men were 
common, 
Mere quartz, where as veined and virgin 
gold her finer nature ran. 

Oh ! Lady of Lilies, and mine by the one 
word spoken 
Mine when the gathering snowflakes fall or 
when roses bloom, 
Mine by the fiat of fate and the silence broken 
Mine through the days, or nights that the 
northern lights illume, 
I wear the thorns, I kiss the flowers, and 
accept the token 
And her face is the one bright thread in my 
life's dull loom. 

The seasons come and they go with the dead 
leaves falling 
The springtide sinks in the summer, the 
blossom forsakes the bee. 
And autumn comes with a purple wand the 
woods enthralling 
Till the winds from the north find harbor by 
the shores of a wintry sea, 
But season and season and change on change 
one voice is calling 
And an echo catches it up and brings it back 
to me. 

185 



I go my way and the way is steep, the way is 
lonely 
But the breeze blows fresh and the long 
long miles can never tire, 
And the erstwhile shadows that rose, in the 
dust are lying pronely 
While my hands are stretched to her in a 
keen, untold desire, 
Oh ! Lady of mine, my own, whose love re- 
deems me only, 
Passionate, pure as the coldest star, and with 
heart of lire. 



86 



KISMET. 

I TOSSED her picture on the coals 

Against the black-log glowing red, 
And snaky flames, Medusa-like 

Coiled and uncoiled about her head, 
And lo 1 the insensate card-board lived 

The fire had set its spirit free. 
And lovingly her fair white arms 

Rose up to clasp and cling to me. 



And when the picture blackened lay. 

Upon its film a profile true. 
Unrolled in hazy silhouette 

Then darted up the chimney's flue, 
And where above the ashes gray 

A blue flame-bubble seemed to float, 
I straightway saw her face again 

A bunch of violets at her throat. 
187 



Oh ! nevermore may I be freed 

From this her presence ; 'tis too late. 
" Bismillah I " so the Moslem cries 

And I the Christian, echo ^' Fate I " 
I raze her image from my heart 

I put away her voice — and she — 
Comes back to where our pathways met 

And walks the journey's end with me. 



i88 



DE MI AMIGO. 

For you the fig and olive shine 

The green leaf spreads and waters run, 
With scarlet banners of the vine 

And gleam of lizard in the sun, 
For me the leafless tree and black, 

The iron weight of winter's ire, 
And some cold meteor's baleful track 

That sails beyond a wake of fire. 

To you shall come the glint of seas 

Blue-dappled in the glance of dawn. 
With threads of many a languid breeze 

Through warp and woof of leaf-looms 
drawn. 
To me December's steely mail 

That armors all the lakes and streams, 
And far-off skies that are as pale 

As some dead spring time's crocus gleams. 
189 



What I will you tempt me with the thought 

Of living summer, I who stand 
Where every sunbeam glistens taut 

Ice-girdled in this northern land ? 
Nor leaf, nor bud, nor blossom's glow 

Hath 'scaped the storm king's icy clutch, 
To lend above the barren snow 

Some hope or hint of April's touch. 



Your phrase of soft Castilian sung 

Shall lull me not to dreamful sleep 
The hammer-stroke of Saxon tongue 

Alone can pass the guard I keep; 
The caballero's old guitar 

In southern clime sounds sweet and low, 
But Hengist's song was aye for war — 

The bill, the axe, the bended bow. 



I yield the charm of gentler speech 

For most melodious interlude, 
Yet harsher accents still may teach 

A nobler meaning, grant it rude ; 
For who that hears a bugle call 

Shall tell of music more divine ; 
A Circe's voice, enchanting all. 

Made heroes level with the swine. 
190 



And for the light of tropic noon, 

The shrill cicala in the grass, 
The full, slow splendor of the moon. 

Where nights like slippered shadows pass, 
I send you word of frozen lanes 

Where clear is etched the horseshoe dint. 
And frost-lace on the window-panes 

And fields as hard as mountain fljnt. 

Yet for your friendship and its sign — 

The message sent — I hold them dear 
In sun and snow, in rain or shine, 

Or whether skies be dark or clear, 
And somewhere out from fancy sprung 

I keep, though wide our paths apart 
A Saxon word upon my tongue. 

Its Spanish echo in my heart. 



191 



BY OUR AIN FIRESIDE. 

'Tis we twain, 'tis we twain 

By our ain fireside ; 

Adown the window glides the rain 

The embers in the ashes hide, 

Tis we twain, we twain. 

By our ain fireside. 

I know not why it seems to be 

So much to watch the coals with thee, 

So much to sit here hand in hand 

Near smoke-wreath dim and smouldering brand 

'Tis we twain, 

By our ain fireside. 

T is we twain, 't is we twain 

By our ain fireside ; 

Swart shadows flit across the pane 

And you and I in silence bide ; 

'Tis we twain, we twain, 

By our ain fireside. 

192 



To-night this hearth-glow leaping thus 
Shall make a merry jest for us, 
For who so far apart as we ? 
And yet — repeat it after me, 
'T is we twain, 

By our ain fireside. 

'T is we twain^ 't is we twain 

By our ain fireside ; 

I smile on you, and mocking feign 

That you my sweetheart are or bride, 

'Tis we twain, we twain, 

By our ain fireside. 



193 



IN A MISSOURI ORCHARD. 

This is the path and this the tree 
Whose blossoms drink the air of May, 
And there the self-same meadowy sea 
In undulations rolls away ; 
And here an ancient granite stone 
Is in the grasses sinking low, 
No changes now to me are shown 
Save that one haunting change alone — 
I miss the face I used to know. 

I see as through a mist of tears 
The summer of a golden past, 
And dark across the day appears 
The shadow that old time has cast ; 
Yet, hark 1 the same blithe cricket sings 
Down in the leaf-beds hiding low, 
I hear the brush of passing wings 
And sounds of once familiar things 
But miss the voice I used to know. 
194 



The breeze upon the languorous air 
Lifts the lithe branches one by one, 
And I and silence, silent share 
The glowing semi-southern sun, 
I see the green Missouri hills 
I feel the blossoms round me blow. 
And all my heart with longing fills 
As memory through my being thrills 
A hand-clasp that I used to know. 

The house upon the rise that sweeps 
A curve of emerald to the west, 
Is still the same, and dumbly keeps 
Its place like some deserted nest. 
Oh ! hopes, that down the long days fled 
Oh ! blossoms with your hearts of snow. 
Oh ! death when all save me are dead. 
Would fate had taken me instead, 
And not the one I used to know. 



19s 



A SANDAL-WOOD FAN. 

The fan of silk and sandal-wood 
That lay within her shapely hand, 
Moved light as any cloud-film could 
That idly sails o'er sea and land, 
While some faint breath from foreign strand 
Rose, languorous, as it curved and swayed, 
Spiced scents of burning Samarcand 
Telling of tropic sun and shade. 

The roses at her supple throat 
Were opening to their coming close 
With those deep tinges which denote 
The coloring of that reddest rose 
The Jacqueminot — while still her fan, 
That subtle, sensuous sandal-wood, 
Had drugged me with its drowsy mood 
Like poppy-juice of Turkestan. 

Her lips, her eyes, her tawny hair. 
Her dress of wavering velvet sheen 
With its pale tints of olive-green, 
Grew on me like a vision fair ; 
196 



And moved the fan as if it seemed 
To lull me, as I lulling dreamed, 
While all the air was heavy there 
With drifting fumes of odorous spice 
Which locked my senses in a vise. 

The actor strutting on the stage 
I saw no more — the mimic play 
Had faded as a moonbeam may 
Writ on a river's liquid page ; 
I saw the face of Helen then, 
I heard the voice of Circe sweep 
Across a stilled, enchanted deep, 
Enchaining there the hearts of men, 
Who had no more its charm withstood 
Than I the fragrant sandal-wood. 

And ever as she moved her wrist 
(A censer, scattering sandal-balm) 
I saw far shores by warm waves kissed, 
And sculptured profiles of the palm, 
And in my heart forebodings came, 
A chill — a hope — a doubt — a flame - 
While drooped a rose's flowering hood 
Under the pungent sandal-wood. 



197 



I FEAR NO POWER A WOMAN 
WIELDS. 

I FEAR no power a woman wields 
While I can have the woods and fields, 
With comradeship alone of gun 
Gray marsh-wastes and the burning sun. 

For aye the heart's most poignant pain 
Will wear away 'neath hail and rain, 
And rush of winds throu.i^h branches bare 
With something still to do and dare. 

The lonely watch beside the shore 
The wild-fowFs cry, the sweep of oar, 
And paths of virgin sky to scan 
Untrod, and so uncursed by man. 

Gramercy, for thy haunting face, 
Thy charm of voice and lissome grace, 
I fear no power a woman wields 
While I can have the woods and fields. 
198 



IN ABSENCE. 

God's life, but I have missed you ; in my sleep 
My dreamless sleep, stone-silent and profound, 
I think I must have stretched my hands to you 
Because my waking hours do glean so much 
Here, there, and everywhere that tells of you. 

They say that 'twixt a man and woman lives 
No friendship such as that of man for man. 
" They say " — who says ? the lying multitude, 
False prophets these, the followers of " they 

say" 
And worthy not your credence, No ! nor that 
Of any man's or woman's since the flood. 

I call you comrade in my thoughts of you 
Though you a woman be and I a man, 
Since by the test of true companionship 
You are as meet to be my friend sincere. 
As woman is to woman, man to man ; 
Have we said aught of love, unless to scoff 
At arch Dan Cupid, that unlucky boy 
Who hides his bow and arrows when we pass ? 
Nay ! faith, for us we '11 have no more of love 
Saving the love of steadfast comradeship. 
199 



A rose began our friendship ; may a rose 
Its emblem be, omitting not the thorn ; 
Green leaf, our hope — and in the deepening 

glow 
Of ruddy petals be its fervor based, 
While for the thorns, let such the record be 
Of all my imperfection and default ; 
And if in time the trust that now endures 
Be scattered to the seven winds that blow. 
The life die out, as petals fade and die — 
Even in that, our friendship is the rose. 

I sometimes liken you unto a rose 
A yellow rose, to suit your matchless hair, 
A rose to match your sweetness and your 
thorns. 



11. 



If you were here to walk with me to-night 
The rock-built terrace where the sands below 
Dip and re-dip their curves within the waves — 
If you were here to name with me the stars 
Or catch a glimpse of some illusive spar 
Limning its blackness on the silver moon — 
I had been happy, or at least content, 
And reckoned not of time as one who sees 
Unwilling days on drowsy wing float past ; 
200 



But you are gone, and this untiring town 
That walks its bounds as tigers do a cage 
Is dull indeed, for that you are away. 

You say my friendship is but for a day, 

I '11 grant you that an you will name to-day, 

I '11 call no imprecations on my head 

With jargon of the sun and moon and skies — 

As warrant of my own fidelity, 

But simply say, " To-day I am your friend 

To-morrow, maybe not, and yesterday — 

Lies buried in the sunless crypt of time." 

Just for a day my faithfulness shall last. 
That day, to-day, and none more loyal friend 
Shall dream of you, nor wish for your return ; 
And if to-morrow brings a change to us, 
Some blighting of the rose of which I spoke — 
Some winter chill across the flowers of June — 
Think of me only as a man who kept 
From sun till sun his promises to you. 

Give me my dues ; that much, I 11 take no less 
For resolute am I to have mine own. 
And if I fail, I fail you, what of that ? 
And if you fail, you fail me, that is all ; 
There is no more, regret is folly's garb 
An act once done, the fact alone remains. 

201 



Yet here upon the mantel of my room 

Your picture waits, and what with sudden 

rain 
Against the window, and my loneliness — 
Approaching night, and something undefined, 
I seem as restless as the restless wind ; 
And some strange power doth impel me now 
To rise from irksome chair and unread book, 
And say, as one who speaks with heart at lip 
" I am an hungered for your face again/' 



POPPIES. 

Oh, blood-red torches of the slumbrous glow 

Light thou my steps to Lethe's dreamy main ; 
And daze my senses that I may not know 

The old dull throb of longing and of pain ; 
Grant me a respite from the light of day 

From suns that shine and pallid rains that 
weep, 
Touch but my arm and lead me far away 

And seal my eyelids with a kiss of sleep. 

Oh ! subtle, flowery magic ; in my stress 

Of direst need, I call alone on thee, 
Since slumber's still, maternal tenderness 

More than all else is merciful to me ; 
Send thou thy angels of the mournful eyes 
With rustling wings that through the dark- 
ness sweep 
To streak with dusk the erstwhile reddening 
skies. 
That I may find oblivion in sleep. 
203 



Bring down the draught that to my trembling 
lips 
Sends peace and rest, while all the outer 
world 
Is steeped and shadowed in a wide eclipse 
Where night's black banners are on high 
unfurled ; 
Bring woven paces and the waving hands ; 
And blot the stars from Heaven's cloudy 
steep ; 
From out the mystic glass let fall the sands 
And since I cannot die, then let me sleep. 



204 



I AM THY KNIGHT. 

I AM thy knight, and thou hast sent me forth 
To battle with the demon of despair, 
To conquer self, and from its ashes bring 
The phoenix of my boyhood's fervid dreams ; 
To live the long, long years and make my life 
Like to the sower as he passes by 
Scattering the grain on rock and fertile field 
To reap or lose as fate shall will it so. 

No favor hast thou sent, as those of old 
Wore lovingly and closely on their hearts 
When they went forth to far-off Palestine, 
But simply for thy word that it is best, 
And for the trust and message sent by thee, 
Do I go on to conquer in the fight 
Of man the brute against the man divine. 

Count me no idle dreamer — most of all 
I pray you not on some high pedestal 
Entrench my nature ; I am but a man 
Who loves and hates, is merry and is sad, 
20=; 



Has known of gladness and has tasted woe, 
And holds no higher honor to himself 
Than truest love to all things true and good 
And pity infinite for suffering. 

Here is my hand — and to the world my scorn ; 

For as I journey onward in my quest 

I shall not falter, even where I fail ; 

But having from the strength of thy rare soul 

Caught some reflection of a light divine, 

Full-armed am I, and resolute as death 

To face the utmost rigor of my fate ; 

To cleave to hope, to hope for happiness 

To be my better self as best I can. 

And so through all the lapses of gray time. 

To be a man because I am thy knight. 



206 



RETROSPECTION. 

The woman tempted me, and I did fall, 
From the resolve to keep my heart intact — 
Sheer from the heights that cautious pride had 

reared, 
Like Lucifer, from heaven down to hell, 
From independence to captivity. 

The woman tempted me ; by not so much 
Of face and figure, as by complement 
Of all that was most sweet and womanly ; 
A spirit tuned to high and pure intent. 
Clear eyes which seemed when looking into 

mine, 
Gray depths that harbored her unsullied 

thought ; 
By not so much of figure or of face — 
For who that loves shall say, ^' Why thus 

and so 
My true love is, more fair than others are," 
Drawing her picture as a painter does. 
With all the cunning patience of his art ? 
207 



Why this were simply puerile and vain 

And insincere, for he whose heart is smote 

By this great agony can only say, 

*' I love her " ; meaning she is beautiful. 

Noble and true, the sum of all desire 

Which makes of man a being more than 

man, 
Better or worse as he himself decrees. 



Somewhere in men's best efforts will be found 
The saving grace of woman's influence. 
And love, that in these garish later days 
Is jeered at by the clay-souled common minds. 
Still shines as bright, still vivifies the earth, 
As Hesperus in far-off summer skies 
Lights darkened paths for the blind sons of 
men. 



The woman tempted me; by not a word 

Nor yet a look, but as a flower might 

By purity, unspotted of the world ; 

For who that wanders down the thorny ways 

Past sterile wastes and on through barren 

roads, 
But pauses where a lone field-blossom lifts 
Its dewy fragrant petals to the sun. 
208 



I cannot sigh for what is past and gone, 
As clouds that flee across the flying moon^ 
For [ am one who recks not of regret, 
Save as a spur to urge to nobler deeds ; 
And life is brief, I find the sunshine best 
Youth and outdoors, not cloisters and old age. 
And key my heart-strings to that concert pitch 
Which vibrates to the happier side of things. 

They say that life is solemn ; make it so ; 
Go banish laughter from the swaying crowds. 
Bring sackcloth, ashes, gather dead-sea fruit 
And flagellate the soul with doubtfulness ; 
But will you check the music of the streams 
Hush the glad burst of blackbird melody 
In maple branches swinging with the winds ; 
Wilt blot the sunlight, hold the nimble grass 
Down to the sod, or darken autumn leaves ? 

The woman tempted me ; an old refrain 
But most persistent, what am I to do. 
Fly, fight or die, or yield as cowards will ? 
My hands are tied, my very lips are sealed. 
I am as one who sees a thorny rose 
And in his fancy wears it on his breast 
Yet in reality sees fancy fade. 
This is the seed of cynicism's root, 
14 209 



When that a man can say, " I love," and does 

not dare 
For honor's sake to break the silences 
That fill the lapses of companionship. 

'M dare do all that may become a man," 
So runs the precept, lighting as a lamp 
The stormy seas that I must needs traverse ; 
I dare do much, so honor stands untouched 
Cut any Gordian knot, aye I even death's — 
Rather than be a burden to my kind — 
But like an Arab who has broken bread 
And taken salt from out a stranger's palm 
And ever afterwards remains his friend. 
So I, who take her friendship and her trust 
With every welcoming pressure of her hand 
Dare not do more than may become a man. 

Religion, creeds, the dogmas or the church. 
Prayer, customs, proverbs, rules and what you 

will 
And after all I hold it to be truth. 
That man himself regenerates himself 
Building anew the spirit's crumbling cell. 

The woman tempted me ; but I have risen 
Level with my temptation, stronger far 



Than in that time before temptation came ; 
For what we meet and overcome does make 
Our strength tenfold, our caution none the 
less. 

The woman tempted me ; I bless the day 

The hour and moment, proving as they do 

That I at last have something in myself 

As worthy of her confidence in me. 

And for the dream that lessened, for the hope 

That was a dream, I happiest am in this 

That time works many marvels, even I 

Once grasped a fact that first was but a dream. 



211 



AT THE PLAY. 

All the stage was alight, 

And the play — 

Just a comedy slight 

With a touch of strained pathos dragged in by 

the way ; 
I remember that night 
And the day that came after, a fair April day. 

Yet how crude it all seemed. 
Commonplace — 
As the dark villain schemed 
With a forced leer of hate in his imbecile face, 
And you sat there and dreamed 
Like a picture framed softly in ribbon and 
lace. 

I had hate in my heart 

Then for you, 

Though I held It apart 

And leaned over and smiled as most lovers 

would do. 
But I knew that no art 
Could teach such a woman as you to be true. 

212 



What of that, let it go ; 
And again 

When I think of it so, 
I am cold and more cynical even than when 
You whispered to know. 
If I thought that most women were truer than 
men ? 

And I say to you yet 

'T was a play. 

When we smilingly met, 

And exchanged all our letters the following 

day. 
And we had no regret 
That the next gusts of March did not whistle 

away. 

No regret ; yet despite 

All disdain ; 

In the same play to-night 

Where the dark villain schemes and the fond 

lovers feign, 
Something blurs on my sight. 
And the wraith that I see is the ghost of love 

slain. 



213 



IF. 



If, when her eyes meet mine my eyes are sealed 
By the last twilight that shall ever fall, 
With life and hope forever past recall 
And all their longings by death's love-kiss 

healed, 
Perhaps forgiveness, like some lily fair, 
May bloom for him who sleeps so soundly 

there. 

If, under shadows that could never cease, 
I was at rest, forevermore at rest — 
A knot of wildwood flowers on my breast, 
If placed there by her hand might send me 

peace — 
A violet cluster, taking from the skies 
The summer depths of her sad, violet eyes. 

If in the silence of that last long sleep, 
She could but read the mystery and see, 
That she alone was all life held for me. 
Mayhap across her heart one pang would 
sweep, 

214 



To think that even death could make no less 
The soul's dim sense of utter loneliness. 

And if at last we wandering shall meet 
In heavenly fields of asphodel above, 
Will the remembrance of our buried love 
Make the white paths of paradise less sweet — 
If in the byways of that far-off land 
Our journeys cross, by some lone stream, and 
we together stand ? 



215 



HER ROOM. 

*'This was her room," my smiling hostess said 
'' And pleasant dreams ; " I thank you for the 

wish. 
The clock strikes twelve, the curtains rustle 

slow 
And candles on the mantel stare at me, 
While light and shade, and something else un- 
seen 
Blend eerily with midnight and myself. 

Her room? My room! for did I not once 

share 
These niches and these draperies with her 

thoughts ? 
And doubtless she will recollect me still ; 
Times change, days die, the seasons come and 

go 
And many a web of winding circumstance 
Will round her far-off pathway weave its 

thread, 

216 



But she remembers me, for true it is 
A woman may forget all other things, 
But not the memory of a man she loved. 

The genius of her nature still abides 

In these four walls, for I will say of her 

She had the natural, artistic touch, 

That makes the most of what is beautiful ; 

Here is a wing of some sea-faring bird 

Which curves in outward line of seeming flight, 

Here is a rose — rough-sketched, but bearing 

yet 
The out-door feeling in its leaf and thorn, 
While higher up, an Indian arrow hangs 
An emblem of the wild barbarian's art. 

This is her room — and in this oaken chair 
Her arms have rested many a sombre night 
When the red moon sank slowly down the 

west 
And Jupiter in stellar radiance 
Burned like a beacon in the darkling skies ; 
Here is a mirror whose quaint carven frame 
Must oft have held her figure and her face ; 
Oh I happy glass to thus enfold her there 
The dainty image of her dainty self, 
As summer pools will hold a lily's form 
In shadow. 

217 



Upon this pillow she has pressed her cheek 
The pale, pale cheek, and closed her deep- 
fringed eyes, 
Turned the smooth keys of Sleep's Pandora 

box 
And drifted up to dim unconsciousness ; 
By this wide window she has marked the 

dawn 
Gild ruddily yon church's dagger-spire. 
And where that grass-plat nestles by the gate 
Watched morning-glories open to the sun. 



What is this woman to me ? Let me think ; 

Not what she was, not as an idol now, 

(The feet of clay and forehead as of brass,) 

But is she part of me, a permanence, 

A lasting recollection to be faced — 

A joy or woe^ what says the sibyl, Thought? 

And now to lend my musing wider scope 
And partly for the sake of argument, 
I '11 boast that I am not a common man ; 
I grant my circle of environment 
With its dull round of crude necessities, 
But after all, my spirit looks aloft, 
I am a dreamer — none the less a man. 
218 



And so when that I loved her, I contend 
It came not in an ordinary sense, 
But gathered all my nature in its grasp 
To give her strength, and truth and tender- 
ness ; 
And what she might have been was dear 

to me 
A thousandfold, for men who, like myself, 
Are blessed or cursed with natures like to fire, 
Know in a way to duller souls denied 
The keen extremes of happiness and pain. 

I 'd have a woman true ; and for the rest 
I 'd have her true whatever else she was, 
Not aspen-like to waver in the wind, 
But like to her who in the olden days 
Said, wondering, " What is it to be false?" 
And I would have her strong in that rare 

strength 
Which rather than it fails unflinching dares 
The cord, the rack, the dungeon and the 
stake. 

I'd have the man the same — there is no love 
Which from the man a lesser meed demands 
Than what is asked of woman ; each to each 
For their great trust should be responsible. 
219 



Where is the woman that my fancy saw I 
This perfect one, did ever she exist ? 
So much she had of what was credible 
And if sincere, then womanly indeed ; 
Why ! see, she failed in her own estimate 
And failing thus, how failed she then in mine 1 

This is her room ; the old illusion fades 

(^' And pleasant dreams," my hostess' voice 

again,) 
Yes, pleasant dreams, I \e worked the prob- 
lem out, 
She had her goodly qualities I know, 
But lacked the major chords of womanhood 
And seemed all minor, being now to me 
An artificial woman I once loved. 



220 



THE GRAY-EYED LADY. 

She stood beside a lichened stone 
The gray-eyed lady, all alone, 
And over her the starlight shone. 

And all her wealth of wondrous hair 
Was black against the winding stair, 
Yea ! she was something more than fair. 

Upon the mystery of her dress 
Above a shadow-curve's caress 
Lay the wan moonshine, motionless. 

Around her wrists curled shinins^ strands 
Of silver, while like welded bands, 
Linked the lithe ivory of her hands. 

Her face was white as are the dead, 
The riddle at the last was read, 
And what she said I leave unsaid. 

And when she vanished from my sight 
Came wraiths of days in phantom flight, 
These faded, and the rest was night. 

221 



TANTALUS. 

Fame? Why a fig for fame — he had marked 

its flight, a will-o-the-wisp, 
"When the sweet spring grass rose fresh and 

strongs and when autumn leaves grew crisp. 

Gold ? 'T was the basest of all base metals 

yet ; better iron and steel ; 
And he flung his sovereigns into the dust and 

ground them under heel. 

Love ? And by love's deep craving alone 

(God pity him) he was curst, 
As a lion that digs in the desert, and digging, 

dies of thirst. 

For luminous — starlike — framed on high, a 

star that could never fall. 
Was the face of the woman he loved — and 

who loved him, that was all. 

222 



ONE WOMAN. 

She is a woman — subtle as her sex, 

And most elusive when she seems fast bound 

In reverie ; I cannot make her out, 

For as a flower, opening to its close 

So is she changeless in unending change. 

Her voice says " Nay 1 " her non-committal 

eyes 
Veil with long lashes depths most eloquent. 
And but for one rebellious dimple's crease 
A smiling sign that softens else-stern lips — 
I would despair where highest I had hoped 
And rail at women for untruthfulness. 

What is it all ? a lifted arching lid 
A look distrait, an intonation clear, 
A tapping of a little restless foot 
Then silence and attention ; and again 
A firm, sure hand-clasp that makes full amends 
For what had brought me heart-ache just be- 
fore. 

223 



I love her and I love her not, for love 
Such as I keep I cannot frame in words 
Or at the most but brokenly, and so 
I love her more in thought and less in speech, 
And love her not since time is still too brief 
To compass what my heart-strings sing of her ; 
And what she says I say to her is true, 
And what she does I do maintain is just 
For might makes right and I her captive stand, 
And stubborn clank my fine-spun iron chains. 

She came into my life as comes at sea 
To some lone shipwrecked mariner, intent, 
A far gray sail that puts aside the mist 
Spanning the distance with a bow of hope. 

'And so, and so — I love her ; grant it trite 
The love of man for woman ; grant it false 
In instances unnumbered — and at last 
I read no peace beyond the stars on high 
I find no promise in the sunlight's kiss, 
And know no recompense that seems to me 
As just to wait — her hand held close in mine — 
Beside the one, one woman that I love. 



224 



IT'S A LONG LANE THAT HAS 
NO TURNING. 

The highway crosses the distant hills 

Low to the west where the sun lies burning, 

Sweetheart — 

Though the hour is late, 

And many miles before me wait, 

It 's a long lane that has no turning. 

I study the mile-stones while I pass. 

As a boy at books his lessons learning, 

Sweetheart — 

The end is far away. 

And yet an echo seems to say, 

It 's a long lane that has no turning. 

Your face flashed up as the sun went down. 
The sweet, pale lips, and the sad eyes yearn- 
ing- 
Sweetheart — 
I pray thee shed no tears, 
For we shall meet beyond the years, 
It 's a long lane that has no turning. 

15 --'5 



IN THE SUNSET LANDS. 



THE PRAIRIE. 

Where the wild flowers, wind-shaken, their 
heads are tossing 
In this lone western land, on prairies rolling 
and vast 
Here, where the whispers of solitude ever are 
crossing 
Here, if nowhere else, there is peace at last. 
Rest for the heart and brain, for the soul, 
world-weary. 
In the strength and might and the beauty of 
trackless prairie. 

In this far land is no taint of civilization. 
No stain of smoke — the heavens above are 
clear as glass — 
With never a sign or faintest trace of any 
nation. 
Naught but a waving, boundless world of 
grass 

229 



Where over the shadows the sunshine shifts 
and lingers, 
And the weeds bend low at the touch of the 

wind's light fingers. 

No voice save the voice of Nature, yet all- 
pervading ; 
Rich in its own strange music, the sweetest 
ever sung 
With earth and sky and the taintless breeze 
the echoes shading. 
And all the billowy prairie overhung 
With a nameless sense of loneliness and wiid- 
ness, 
That thrills with its life and color the summer 
mildness. 

Miles upon miles of grassy swells, sown thick 
with flowers 
In yellow and purple lines, in clusters flam- 
ing red. 
Tinted with Nature's brushes and watered by 
the showers 
On the slopes, and over the hollows spread ; 
On every hill their gorgeous banners showing, 
And far across the prairie in vivid colors 
glowing. 

230 



Here indeed is the keen, strong wine of free- 
dom tasted ; 
A draught once drank, it is never forgotten 
again, 
Where never a man's heart wears away, by 
sorrow wasted, 
For Nature's moods are kinder than those 
of men ; 
This is the land whose healing touch is sure 
and painless — 
This is the land that God smiles on — the 
prairie, pure and stainless. 



231 



AN INDIAN BOW. 

This curved, smooth length was erst a harp 
From whence the twanging echoes leaped, 
Its feathered shafts with crooked grooves 
In many a foeman's blood were steeped, 
The buffalo-sinew stretched across 
Sang sharply once in savage hands. 
Resounding in the slothful wind 
That drifts across the prairie-lands. 

But now, like some cowed rattlesnake 
All venomless, with wrenched-out fangs, 
Upon the wall of this my home 
The wild Comanche's weapon hangs. 
The buffalo-sinew stretched across 
Strikes discords in unskilful hands. 
Unlike the old-time resonance 
That buzzed across the prairie-lands. 



232 



A TARAHUMARI RUNNER. 

Thick, rawhide sandals on his feet, 

A bronze-red figure full of grace, 
Inured alike to cold and heat, 

He stands, the flower of his race : 
Broad in the chest, with lower limb 

Symmetrical and hard and slim, 
With breech-clout steeped in sombre dyes 

Folded securely round his thighs ; 
And loosely on his massive breast 

A necklace rude of shells is hung — 
By some cliff-dwelling maiden strung 

And by his coarse, black hair caressed. 
His hair, from whence his dark eyes glow: 

The runner, Candelario. 

Far in a savage vastness wild 

He makes his home the cliffs among, 

Where chaos lies in fragments piled 

And chides the thunder's muttering tongue, 
233 



Where the red lightning's fingers reach 

All sudden through the storm-cloud's breach ; 
And where the hurricane's fell wrath 

Through mountain timber sweeps its path ; 
And here upon the deer's faint trail 

He follows on from day to day 
From ruddy dawn to evening gray 

O'er cliff and chasm, sand and shale 
Till with his knife he slays the roe : 

The runner, Candelario. 

A hundred miles a day to him 

Is nothing — as with dog-trot pace 
He takes departure stanch and grim, 

Nor stops nor falters in the race — 
A primal athlete he, who goes 

Where the swift torrent downward flows ; 
Across the steeps in level flight, 

Adown the glens and up the height — 
The weary wolf will seek repose. 

And deer shall in their covert bed 
Lie down and rest, while overhead 

The crow his flagging wings must close, 
Yet onward speeds yon speck below : 

The runner, Candelario. 



234 



LITTLE BIG HORN. 

Beside the lone river, 
That idly lay dreaming, 
Flashed sudden the gleaming 
Of sabre and gun 
In the light of the sun 
As over the hillside the soldiers came streaming. 

One peal of the bugle 
In stillness unbroken 
That sounded a token 
Of soul-stirring strife, 
Savage war to the knife, 
Then silence that seemed like defiance un- 
spoken. 

But out of an ambush 
Came warriors riding, 
Swift ponies bestriding. 
Shook rattles and shells. 
With a discord of yells, 
That fired the hearts of their comrades in 
hiding. 

235 



Then fierce on the wigwams 
The soldiers descended, 
And madly were blended, 
The red man and white, 
In a hand-to-hand fight. 
With the Indian village assailed and defended. 

And there through the passage 
Of battle-torn spaces. 
From dark lurking-places, 
With blood-curdling cry 
And their knives held on high, 
Rushed Amazon women with wild, painted 
faces. 

Then swung the keen sabres 
And flashed the sure rifles 
Their message that stifles 
The shout in red throats, 
While the reckless blue-coats 
Laughed on mid the fray as men laugh over 
trifles. 

Grim cavalry troopers 
Unshorn and unshaven, 
And never a craven 
In ambuscade caught, 
How like demons they fought 
Round the knoll on the prairie that marked 
their last haven. 
236 



But the Sioux circled nearer 
The shrill war-whoop crying, 
And death-hail was flying, 
Yet still they fought on 
Till the last shot was gone. 
And all that remained were the dead and the 
dying. 

A song for their death, and 
No black plumes of sorrow, 
This recompense borrow, 
Like heroes they died 
Man to man — side by side, 
We lost them to-day, we shall meet them to- 
morrow. 

And on the lone river. 
Has faded the seeming 
Of bright armor gleaming. 
But there by the shore 
With the ghosts of No-more 
The shades of the dead through the ages lie 
dreaming. 



237 



ARIZONA. 

A THOUSAND long-horned cattle grazed 

Upon a boundless field, 
And, with a shading hand upraised 

His bearded face to shield, 
A swarthy herder's watchful eyes 
Saw distant shadows fall and rise. 

A clash of hoofs stampeded there 

Beat fast a loud tattoo, 
And whizzing keenly through the air 

A feathered arrow flew I — 
A gray mustang with streaming mane 
Dashed riderless across the plain. 



238 



THE SUN-DANCE OF THE SIOUX. 

The shroud of a dim, white cloud 

Lifted a vapory spire, 

And aloft in the sky the sun 

Burned like a world on fire ; 

And the warriors one by one 

There in the wilderness lone, 

Chanted in jarring tone, 

And muttered the medicine-man 

As the dance of the sun began. 

And high in their centre stood 
A sapling of iron-wood, 
And there the dancers massed 
And backward and sideways passed, 
While through each muscular breast 
A strip of hide was strung 
That taut from the upright pole 
Was stretched, as back they hung; 
And grim in the cruel test 
They danced on the sterile knoll. 
While chanted the medicine-man 
As the blood-drops downward ran. 
239 



And back and forth they went 
In the throes of that awful dance, 
Now straight as a seasoned lance 
And now in a crescent bent ; 
While a rhythmic time they beat 
With the stamp of their moccasined feet, 
And out from the pole they swung 
At the ends of the raw-hide reins, 
While ruddy and spreading stains 
From the gaping wounds were wrung. 

Fierce were their sloe-black eyes 

And never a brave would faint, 

Resonant rose their cries 

Demons in garish paint ; 

And earthward the sunlight poured 

As the flash of a mighty sword, 

While round in a circle still 

Upheld by the stoic will. 

In the grasp of the raw-hide strips 

With foam on their parted lips, 

And their breasts pierced through and through 

Leaped the warriors of the Sioux. 

And the sun sank, and was gone ; 
And the stars came out above 
While night drew softly on 
The darkness, like a glove ; 
240 



And still their shrill cries rang 
Harsh and more savage grown, 
As upward and out they sprang 
Weird forms in the m/idnight shown 
Till the opaline moon had paled 
And the light of the stars had failed, 



Then rose the sun again 

On that circle of tameless men 

On wigwam and on chief. 

On the grass and shimmering leaf, 

On the cluster of watchful squaws 

And the dogs with wolfish jaws, 

While dull in a ceaseless drone 

The voice of the medicine-man. 

In its guttural undertone 

Of strident echo ran. 



And there at the turn of noon 

With deep, despairing yell. 

Headlong in sudden swoon 

Three of the warriors fell ; 

But the rest danced on and on 

And tense in their breasts were drawn 

The stiffening strips of hide, 

As they circled side by side. 

i6 241 



And there as the slow day waned 
All weak from the dire test, 
With the veins in each brawny chest 
Of their glowing globules drained, 
They sank on the beaten ground, 
In their gory harness bound, 
In the glare of the dying sun 
Each brave with his bosom cleft. 
Staggering one by one 
Till one alone was left. 

And he, on the trampled sod 
One moment in silence stood. 
Then broke from the torturing wood 
And like to a demi-god 
He towered above the rest 
With his torn and bleeding breast, 
And downward plunged the sun 
And the dance of the Sioux was done. 



242 



A PRAIRIE MINUET. 

Slow bobbing, bobbing to and fro 
With awkward steps across the grass, 
In solemn lines they come and go 
And like to dancers change and pass. 

Their ceiling is the deep blue sky, 
The ball-room floor, the level plains ; 
Their music, winds that hurry by 
This minuet of sand-hill cranes. 



243 



OVERLAND. 

A TREELESS Stretch of grassy plains, 
Blue-bordered by the summer sky ; 
Where past our swaying, creaking stage, 
The buffaloes go thundering by, 
And antelope in scattered bands 
Feed in the breezy prairie-lands. 

Far down the west a speck appears. 
That falls and rises, on and on, 
An instant to the vision clear, 
A moment more, and it is gone — 
And then it dashes into sight. 
Swift as an eagle's downward flight. 

A ring of hoofs, a flying steed, 

A shout — a face — a waving hand — 

A flake of foam upon the grass 

That melts — and then alone we stand. 

As now a speck against the gray. 

The pony-rider fades away. 

244 



NEZ PERCES. 

Through the defile lay the tents to the north- 
ward 
Past the gaunt spurs of the beetling Sierras, 
Plain was the trail, but aloft in the mountains 
Crouched the Nez Perces, and watched o'er 

the valley ; 
Scanning the pathway with eyes that were 

eager 
Shifting their rifles and waiting in patience, 
Knowing that still to the south lay their quarry 
Twenty grim troopers cut off from their 
comrades. 

Faded a day and a night and a dawning 
Lengthened the days, but the Indians waited 
Chewing dried flesh of the deer to sustain 

them, 
Reaching with hollowing palm for the water 
Trickling from snow-covered summits un- 
trodden ; 

245 



Smiling but seldom, and then with a wrinkle 
Of leathery cheeks as they thought of the 

troopers ; 
Baleful black eyes that were lighted with 

vengeance 
Hair like the raven's wing sweeping their 

shoulders 
Cats of the mountain, crouched low in their 

hiding, 
Patient as death, and as stern and relentless. 



Miles to the south was the camp of the 

twenty, 
Men of wild lives, but the hearts in their 

bosoms 
When but the breath of the battle came o'er 

them 
Rose up to meet it like steel to a magnet ; 
Knowing no fear and familiar with danger 
Skilled in the use of the sabre and rifle. 
Sitting like centaurs their Indian ponies. 
Soldiers, as brown as the grasses of Autumn. 

Gray rose the moon o'er the towering 

mountains 
Tipping each peak with a frost-work of silver, 
246 



Gray were the ashes where camp-fires smoul- 
dered 
Sparkless as dust in the middle of summer, 
Gray as a ghost was the stream that ran by 

them 
There, as they mounted their ponies and 

started, 
Gray and serene were the stars that hung over 
Jewels of night undissolved in the darkness. 

Threading their way to the pass through the 

uplands 
Certain of peril and ready to meet it, 
Silent as spectres they rode in the moonlight. 
Moonlight and starlight a-shine on their 

weapons — 
Till at the turn of a bend in the valley 
"Where the broad gate of the hills had been 

opened. 
Right at the mouth of the canyon they halted. 

Halted to tighten the girths on the ponies 
Halted to wipe the night-dews from their 

rifles, 
Stayed for one hand-clasp, one word from their 

leader. 
Then light of heart they sprang into the saddle, 
247 



Spurred for the pass one by one, all defiant 
Reckless and heedless of God, man or devil. 

Each after each o'er the Hint and the granite 
Clattered the hoofs of the galloping ponies, 
Nothing beside stirred the stillness around 

them 
Till near the centre, all sudden and awful 
There at its narrowest, hell broke the silence ; 
One sheet of flame like the lightning, zig- 
zagging, 
Leaped from the cliffs, and the sharp-snarling 

echoes 
Blended with yells that the chosen of Hades 
Might well have envied, could they have but 

listened ; 
Then came the answering shouts from the 

stragglers 
Posted along the huge rocks of the canyon, 
High rose the shrill whoops of triumph and 

slaughter 
Clear shone the moon with a cloudless re- 
splendence, 
Ghastly and clear on that fated inferno. 
While from the jaws of the gorge disappearing 
Scattering sparks from his iron-shod pony. 
Passed like a wraith into midnight translated 
Silently still, only one of the twenty. 
248 



Red rose the dawn on the jagged Sierras 
Sweet sang the birds, and the morning grass 

glistened 
When from the south, to the tents at the 

northward 
Rode the lone leader, the last of the twenty ; 
Limp hung his arm, and his stirrup was 

shivered, 
Blood on his face and his forehead and fingers, 
Slow lagged his pony, and still like a soldier 
Upright and firmly he sat in the saddle. 
Weakened from wounds so that speech almost 

failed him. 

Swift rushed his comrades to seize him and 

aid him, 
While from their lips came the cry " And the 

others ? " 
Then with a gesture of infinite meaning 
He of the lion-heart, telling the story. 
Turned his thumb down, with the brown hand 

extended, 
(Strange, was it not, that death-sign of the 

Roman — ) 
Smiled in their faces and whispered " Nez 

Perce." 



249 



A PRAIRIE PICTURE. 

A LIGHT shines out in the dark northwest 

Like a star in a cloudy frame ; 
It wavers, and then from the prairie's breast 

Springs up a sea of flame, 
That full of a fierce desire, 
Pours down in a tide of fire. 

With strength that scorns all bond or shackle 
Free as the wind it rolls and leaps, 

And the tall dry grasses roar and crackle 
As over the fire sweeps ; 

And the gloomy, far-off sky 

Lights up as it gallops by. 

Into the air it darts and flashes 
Sending upward a blood-red glow, 

And driving ahead the white-hot ashes 
As thick as drifting snow ; 

And its fiery, scorching breath 

Is as pitiless as death. 

250 



Far in its wake lie embers gleaming, 
Sparkling up as the night-winds blow, 

And miles away is a red flood streaming 
With naught to mark its flow, 

Save a scarlet fringe of light 

On the curtains of the night. 



251 



RED CLOUD. 

In the land of the Sioux the first grass was up- 
springing. 
And new on the tepees the fresh skins were 
lain ; 
The bleak winter months had gone overland, 
bringing 
Far down in their wake, the last dashings of 
rain ; 
The beaver peeped out of the valley morasses 
And slow on the timber his gnawings begun ; 
The tethered-out horses were cropping the 
grasses 
And the Indian boys wandered wild in the 
sun. 

Wandered wild in the sun with their bows and 
full quivers 
Over prairie lands wide in the far-away west, 
By the hills and the woods and the reed-girdled 
rivers 
Where never the foot of a white man had 
pressed ; 

252 



And down by the village the squaws gathered 
fuel 
Where little papooses in nakedness ran, 
While prone on his blanket, with face cold and 
cruel, 
Lay silently smoking, — the medicine-man. 



Ten braves were away to the land of the 
stranger 
Whose homes lay afar in America's Alps, 
Away on a foray of desperate danger 

For plunder and glory, for horses and scalps, 
Lithe, sinewy warriors, with peril acquainted 
Thin-lipped and slow-spoken — long-haired 
— heavy-browed. 
All eager for battle — beweaponed and painted, 
And the chief of the band was the sombre 
" Red Cloud." 



Red Cloud I His high cheek bones set off his 
grim forehead 
And the light in his eyes like an eagle's was 
fierce. 
And merciless, too, as the crotalus horrid 
When he coils with his poison-fangs ready to 
pierce ; 

253 



A tower of strength and a deer for swift run- 
ning 
With limbs as of iron and sinuous grace, 
No wolf was more tireless, no fox matched his 
cunning 
Red Cloud, the great chief of the mighty 
Sioux race. 



To the land of the Blackfeet once more they 
had ridden 
Their ancient, inveterate, bloodthirsty foes ; 
At night in the saddle, by day they were hidden 
Nor stirred on their quest till the silver moon 
rose ; 
So noiseless they moved while they sped o'er 
the prairie 
That they seemed but as shadows where 
shadow shapes meet. 
For the listening silence no echo could carry 
From the soft-muffled hoofs of the war- 
ponies fleet. 

Ten braves and the chief gone for booty and 
pillage 
So mused through his smoking the medicine- 
man, 

254 



The pick of the tribe and the pride of the vil- 
lage 
And choicest of all of the warrior clan ; 
Twenty moons now had waned, yet no sign 
had been given 
The grasses grew longer, the trees were in 
leaf, 
Twenty times through the heavens the moon- 
man had driven 
Where then were the warriors, where was 
the chief ? 



And as he sat scowling, foreboding disaster, 
With wrinkled-up forehead, the medicine- 
man. 
Came the quick clash of hoofs, beating faster 
and faster 
As the roll of a drum — rat-a-plan, rat-a- 
plan — 
And there in their midst as his brave courser 
staggered 
With foam-whitened nostrils and fell like a 
stone, 
With the battle light still in his eyes deep and 
haggard 
Red Cloud, the Sioux chief, stood among 
them alone. 

255 



And then, as the women began their shrill 
wailing 
For the souls of the braves to the Great 
Spirit fled, 
The keen, savage protest, and all unavailing 
That marks the rude grief for barbarian 
dead, 
Then down from his shoulder ten Blackfeet 
scalps throwing 
He said with a look^as of Lucifer proud : 
"Ten braves I took with me when spring 

grass was growing, 
Ten chiefs have come back by the side of Red 
Cloud." 



256 



GERONIMO. 

Beside that tent and under guard 
In majesty alone he stands 
As some chained eagle, broken-winged 
With eyes that gleam like smouldering brands ; 
A savage-face, streaked o'er with paint, 
And coal-black hair in unkempt mane, 
Thin, cruel lips, set rigidly — 
A red Apache Tamerlane. 

As restless as the desert winds, 
Yet here he stands like carven stone. 
His raven locks by breezes moved 
And backward o'er his shoulders blown ; 
Silent, yet watchful as he waits 
Robed in his strange, barbaric guise, 
While here and there go searchingly 
The cat-like wanderings of his eyes. 

The eagle feather on his head 
Is dull with many a bloody stain, 
17 257 



While darkly on his lowering brow 
Forever rests the mark of Cain ; 
Have you but seen a tiger caged 
And sullen through his barriers glare ? 
Mark well his human prototype, 
The fierce Apache fettered there. 



258 



INDIAN BURIAL. 

A RUDE, high scaffold builded here 
Where the wild prairie rolls away — 
Stands desolate in twilight gray 
Surmounted by a single spear ; 
This is the Blackfoot chieftain's bier, 
Thus rests at length his pulseless clay, 
Watched by the shaded eyes of day 
And skulking wolves that linger near. 

And creakingly the rough poles shake 
When the winds drift by grasses tall, 
And sifting shreds of moonlight fall 
On the carved death-mask, flake by flake 
Dawns come and go, and sunsets break 
Wave after wave o'er night's dark pall, 
Nor heeds nor recks he of it all 
Nay, who will speak that he may wake r 



His trusty weapons round him lain, 
He sleeps upon this wind-swept bed 
259 



In blankets wrapped from foot to head 
And under him his best horse slain — 
And dreams, until the cry amain 
Through the long silence far hath sped, 
And then he wakes who now lies dead, 
Else the Great Spirit calls in vain. 



260 



A MOUNTAIN TRAIL BY MOON 
LIGHT. 

The moon-flood in the solitude 
Streamed through the timber gray and cold, 
And soft tlie night-wind's interlude 
Came past the brook, which sinuous rolled 
Down the old mountain like a snake ; 
And all night long, with steadfast glow, 
The stars in heaven lay awake 
To watch the listless earth below. 



And stealthily mid slumbrous air, 
O'er sharp pine needles strewn with cones. 
The dusk went tip-toe, here and there 
And whispered in mysterious tones, 
While sweeping through the vistas round 
A soft-voiced zephyr seemed to bring, 
Fine chords of crisp, uncanny sound 
That almost made the silence sing. 
261 



Each tree was tranced in perfect calm 
Dumb worshippers at Druid shrines, 
While nature's censer scattered balm, 
Fresh incense from the living pines ; 
Each peak a statue stood, at rest, 
Transfigured by the ghostly moon, 
The wild-bird lay within his nest 
And all the world was in a swoon. 



Above a mass of jagged rock 

That stamped a shadow on the sky, 

A hemlock, smote by lightnmg shock, 

Dead, blanched and grim, rose far on high ; 

And suddenly across the spell 

Where midnight in this vastness dreamed. 

Like some dread echo out of hell 

Deep in the woods a panther screamed. 



262 



THE NAVAJO. 

Straight as a shaft of mountain ash 

A copper-hued American ; 

And round his loins was bound a sash 

The raiment of barbaric man ; 

And bright across his sunken cheeks 

Were painted two broad scarlet streaks, 

That heightened with their garish dyes 

The midnight blackness of his eyes. 

The buckskin moccasins he wore 
With gaudy beads were thick inlaid, 
And in his hand a wand he bore 
Most curiously carved and made, 
And on his wrist two bells he kept 
That tinkled as he lightly stepped, 
The talisman by which his spells 
Lured serpents from their rocky cells. 

Wide stretched the waste of desert lands 
Beside him there ; a waveless shore, 
263 



Of burnished and of treeless sands 
Like to some buried ocean's floor. 
Where all year long the ruddy sun 
A woof and warp of flame-thread spun, 
And where the cactus reared its spike 
And each parched season seemed alike. 

And while the bells did music make, 
Before him, and with neck upraised 
And cold eyes fixed, a rattlesnake, 
Turned in its coil as if half dazed ; 
And moved the charmer to and fro 
While undulated, smooth and slow. 
As fast he paced with arms outspread — 
The dull ophidian's llattened head. 

Gray-mottled was the reptile's skin 
Beneath the sun's rays glistening ; 
And curved and crinkled out and in 
The dusky coil's compacted ring; 
And fast and faster swept the chime 
Of tinkling bells in rhythmic time. 
The while the snake's keen vision dire 
Lost something of its steely ire. 

And then the savage stooped to take 
Up from the twisting spiral fold, 
264 



The sinuous body of the snake, 

When instantly its eyes so cold 

Flashed lightning ; in that flash it sprang 

Upon him ; from its hollow fang 

Swift through his veins the venom leaped 

And all Fiis soul in death was steeped. 



265 



A SONG OF THE SUNSET LAND. 



In the far-ofT hills of the sunset land ; 

In the land where the long grass bends and 
quivers, 
Where the ghosts of night and morning stand 
By the gleams and dreams of the lonely 

rivers, 
There the brown sedge waving, stoops and 
shivers 
At the water's edge in the sunset land. 



Through the trackless paths of the sunset land ; 
Where the silence broods under far skies 
rounded 
And the days slip by like grains of sand, 

There the song unsung and the chord un- 
sounded 
Seem like a part of the desert, bounded 
By the wild gray wastes of the sunset land. 
266 



On the snow-clad peaks of the sunset land ; 
As they rise in the clouds so near to heaven 

In shadowy vastness, stern and grand ; 
There gaunt old pines by the lightning riven, 
Moan in the winds through their branches 
driven, 

On the cra<rs and clifTs of the sunset land. 



'b^ 



Mid the rolling plains of the sunset land, 
Where the echoes drift on the tufted heather 

In the wake of breezes sweet and bland ; 
There the shadows go in a troop together 
Across the haze of the fair June weather 

In the grassy dells of the sunset land. 

By the wand'ring streams of the sunset land, 
Where the ripples rise mid the tall reeds 
bending 
And float away to an unknown strand ; 

There the shade and the sunlight slow de- 
scending 
Fall where the voice of the waters blending 
Sings of the sunset land. 



267 



f\ 



tL^^H"^^ O"" CONGRESS 



"^"Ss^s^ 015 762 718 1 



I 



^C ^ 




